The Background
In the early 90’s, at the dawn of the World Wide Web, some engineers at Netscape developed a protocol
for making secure HTTP requests, and what they came up with was called SSL. Given the relatively
scarce body of knowledge concerning secure protocols at the time, as well the intense pressure everyone
at Netscape was working under, their efforts can only be seen
as incredibly heroic. It’s amazing that SSL has endured for as long as it has, in contrast to a number
of other protocols from the same vintage. We’ve definitely learned a lot since then, though, but the thing
about protocols and APIs is that there’s very little going back.