Book excerpt: Now in its Third Edition, this completely revised and updated reference provides a thorough and comprehensive introduction into the SSL, TLS, and DTLS protocols, explaining all the details and technical subtleties and showing how the current design helps mitigate the attacks that have made press headlines in the past. The book tells the complete story of TLS, from its earliest incarnation (SSL 1.0 in 1994), all the way up to and including TLS 1.3. Detailed descriptions of each protocol version give you a full understanding of why the protocol looked like it did, and why it now looks like it does. You will get a clear, detailed introduction to TLS 1.3 and understand the broader context of how TLS works with firewall and network middleboxes, as well the key topic of public infrastructures and their role in securing TLS. You will also find similar details on DTLS, a close sibling of TLS that is designed to operate over UDP instead of TCP. The book helps you fully understand the rationale behind the design of the SSL, TLS, and DTLS protocols and all of its extensions. It also gives you an in-depth and accessible breakdown of the many vulnerabilities in earlier versions of TLS, thereby more fully equipping you to properly configure and use the protocols in the field and protect against specific (network-based) attacks. With its thorough discussion of widely deployed network security technology, coupled with its practical applications you can utilize today, this is a must-have book for network security practitioners and software/web application developers at all levels.