EV SSL: A new weapon in combating internet fraud

>SSL is used to validate the identity of the
SSL was originally developed as a securee-commerce website so that the customers
communications protocol to protect consumersknow for sure that their information won’t
from fraud in their online business transactions.be sent to some fraudulent website. Once identity
When it failed in the form of widespread phishingis established, SSL creates a secure connection
scams, a better method was needed to win backbetween the website and the customers.
customer confidence. The answer is EV SSL. TheWebsites are authenticated by their SSL
internet has revolutionized our lives by makingcertificates that are issued by a trusted company
billions of pages of information available to us. Itknown as a Certificate Authority or CA. One of
has changed the way we work, do business,the most trusted CAs in the world is Verisign.
entertain ourselves and shop for interestingDespite all its merits, SSL suffered from a serious
products. The internet has done away withflaw. Any website could sign its own SSL
physical boundaries by turning the whole worldcertificates and thus make itself appear genuine.
into a global marketplace. The amount of businessThe average internet user didn’t know
transactions involving credit card details and othermuch about distinguishing between self-signed and
sensitive financial information is staggering andCA-signed SSL certificates. This allowed fraudulent
numbers in the millions every day. It waswebsites to steal sensitive business information
understood long before the proliferation offrom unwitting customers. The stealing of
e-commerce that the sensitive financialinformation in this way is referred to as a phishing
information of customers can easily bescam. 
compromised as it passes through dozens ofWith the rapidly increasing incidences of phishing
computers all around the world to reach itsscams, consumer confidence in online transactions
destination. To ensure the protection of thiswas dangerously eroded to the extent that online
sensitive information, a global standard forbusinesses began to suffer substantially. The
security was developed by the name of SecureExtended Validation SSL standard was developed
Sockets Layer or SSL.to win back consumer confidence through
SSL is a communication protocol that works bystringent certificate verification and visual display in
scrambling the sensitive data through a processhighly secure internet browsers like IE7 and
called encryption. Encryption allows only theFirefox 3. When customers visit a website using
authorized parties to view the information.an EV SSL certificate, the URL address bar of the
Hackers and other criminals can still get theirbrowser turns green indicating that the site can
hands on encrypted data but it is basically uselessbe trusted. The organizational identity and name
to them. To extract the original information fromof the CA such as Verisign is also shown next to
the encrypted data, hackers have to usethe green bar to further provide proof that the
brute-force decryption methods. Fortunately,website is not fraudulent. Since EV SSL
most secure websites support 128-bit SSLcertificates can only be acquired from a
encryption. This encryption is strong enough sowell-known CA, the chances of phishing scams
that it can take hundreds of years to decrypt ithave greatly diminished and consumer confidence
through brute force methods.  SSL promised toin online business transactions has been restored.
allow people to share their credit card details onAll we need to do now to protect ourselves from
shopping websites and access their bank accountphishers is to look for the green bar and
information without having to worry about theirthat’s it.
financial information getting into the wrong hands.