What Is SSLeay?

What better way to prepare your website for the future than by SSLeay?In 1995, Eric A. Young developed SSLeay, an open-source SSL tool for handling some types of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates for Web security. SSLeay's original purpose was to provide a method for using the OpenSSL library in applications that required a custom build environment. The original OpenSSL library was designed for Unix and did not include application programming interfaces (APIs) for other platforms. The SSLeay API allowed developers familiar with the OpenSSL library to create applications that could be compiled for Windows or other operating systems. As time passed, people began using SSLeay to develop their applications by adding new features or modifying existing ones. Some of these improvements included support for running under Windows 2000 and XP, support for multiple languages; support for running in a shared memory space; the ability to export keys as PEM files; and many others. In 2010, Eric A. Young released SSLeay as open-source software under Apache License 2.0. SSLeay is the module that makes the world go round. It supports some types of SSL certificates and certificate requests, so if you want to get your hands on some of the latest and greatest encryption technology, SSLeay is the best way. It's also open-source, so you can use it for free! That's right: free encryption technology. In addition to using the library for free, you can use it in any way you please. That's right: no restrictions on how you use this library! OpenSSL and SSLeay are two similar tools that have a lot in common. OpenSSL is often considered a "fork" project of SSLeay, but they both have the same primary goal: making it easier for developers to create secure communication. While some differences exist, most experts agree that OpenSSL is an excellent alternative to SSLeay when implementing security in your code. Both are used similarly and sometimes interchangeably, though there are issues with replacing one for the other in specific environments.