Heightened Security: OpenSSL 1.0.0 Beta 1

No April Fool's joke, the first beta version of OpenSSL has been released. The toolkit has been around under Linux for years, although the project so far has been very conservative in its versioning. OpenSSL developers are now asking the community to test the 1.0.0 first beta and send patches and bugs to openssl-bugs@openssl.org.

Per changelog, numerous changes occurred in the libraries since version 0.9.8. Digest and cipher names no longer require the dgst and cipher keywords on the command line. The hash format for certificate directory links was improved and now uses the SHA1 instead of MD5 algorithm. Changes sponsored by Google are showing up related to certificate revocation lists (CRLs). The changelog accompanies the source code and has further details.

OpenSSL is a free implementation of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) v2/v3 and Transport Layer Security (TLS) v1, further based on the SSLeay library developed by Eric A. Young and Tim J. Hudson. It generates and manages certificates and creates keys. Sources for OpenSSL are available on the project's download page.