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I've a quick question:

I have 2 websites, 1 has some links to file downloads. Those files are hosted on another server. I need to encrypt the request data between the 2 servers..can I do it just using a SSL certificate?

Any other/better idea?

Those files are private docs, so I don't want the server 2 or any other people being able to track the file requests between the servers.

Thanks

fackz
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2 Answers2

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Yes, use SSL (or actually TLS) if you want to achieve transport level security. If these are two servers that you control you can configure your own self signed certificates. If you want to make sure that only the two servers can communicate with each other, then require client-authentication, where both the server and client use a certificate/private key pair.

Most of the time the trick is to implement a sensible key management procedure. Setting up a web server to handle TLS using certificates should not be too hard.

Maarten Bodewes
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SSL certificate will work fine for ensuring the transfer is encrypted. Even just a self signed certificate will be fine for this purpose (provided you can tell the client you're going to use to accept the self signed cert)

Alternatively if it's two linux machines then scp (secure copy) is a great tool where it'll connect via ssh and grab the files. (There probably is a windows scp tool but I don't know it)

Rsync also supports going via ssh

As for tracking the request... there's nothing you can do to prevent any device between your computer and the destination computer logging the fact a connection was made but the encryption should prevent anyone from getting to the actual data you're sending.

Ben Stephens
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