How to use Secure Sockets Layer to help protect pages in your Web in FrontPage 2002 (292633)

SUMMARY

When you create a new FrontPage Web, you can select the Secure connection required option. When you select this option, the entire Web uses the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) port to encrypt all data sent to or from FrontPage. This is called secured authoring. You can also specify if you want to use the SSL port for links to specific pages in a normal, unsecured Web. This is called secured browsing. This article describes how to accomplish both secure authoring and secure browsing.

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Use SSL for Secure Authoring

1. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Web.
2. In the New dialog box, click to select the Secure connection required check box.
   
   Note You must specify an HTTP location in the Specify the location of the new web box. If you are creating a disk-based Web, the Secure connection required check box will be unavailable.
3. Click OK.

For additional information about how to create a new Web, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: SSL provides a highly secure (encrypted and authenticated) communication between the client and the server, based on public-key cryptography. To send a secure message, the sender encrypts the message with the recipient's public key, and the recipient decrypts the message with the recipient's private key. Since only the recipient has the private key that can decrypt the message, the message is secure.

To guarantee authenticity, a certificate accompanies the public key. A certificate is a digital signature on a digest of the friendly (human readable) name of the participant, together with the participant's public key. The certificate is encrypted with the private key of the certifying authority. To check the authenticity of the public key of the participant, anyone can compute the digest of the friendly name and public key for that participant and can decrypt the certificate for that public key by using the public key of the certifying authority and check that the same digest results.

Note FrontPage 2002 can use WININET if Internet Explorer 5 is installed; it is capable of using 128-bit encryption in that case. If Internet Explorer 5 is installed with 40-bit encryption, FrontPage 2002 only uses 40-bit encryption. If Internet Explorer 5 is installed with 128-bit encryption, FrontPage 2002 can use 128-bit encryption.

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Use SSL for Secure Browsing

If you want to require that SSL be used to browse some of your pages, you can mix ports on a single Web by using a fully qualified Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that is similar to the following example: Web servers use a separate port for SSL connections. This is identified by the protocol being used in the URL: http:// or https://. To create an SSL link rather than linking to a specific file by using a relative URL that is similar to this you can use a fully-qualified URL, like this: This will force the browser to go to the SSL port (usually 443) instead of the default port (usually 80). To link from the SSL port to port 80, reverse the process: To create an SSL link from a page in your Web for secure browsing, follow these steps:

1. In FrontPage, select the text that you want to use for your hyperlink.
2. On the Insert menu, click Hyperlink.
3. In the URL box, change http:// to https:// and type the complete URL of your page.
   
   For example, type the following: https://example.microsoft.com/default.htm
4. Click OK.

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