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It might sound stupid but I could not find the straight answer.

  1. Do I need to worry about communication security if I use only TCP socket to communicate between 2 machines? Is the byte stream can be intercepted and read in plain?
  2. Do I need to SSL/TLS if I am not using application-level protocol(HTTP)?
  3. If 2 Yes, then how to that in C++/C.
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  • 2
    1: yes, 2: yes, 3: that's very broad
    – AndrolGenhald
    Commented Jan 30, 2018 at 21:09
  • Is the byte stream encrypted? Do you need encryption at all?
    – schroeder ♦
    Commented Jan 30, 2018 at 21:13
  • @schroeder: No, but I can encrypt it If I want. If I encrypt SSL/TLS not required ?.
    – Kumar Roshan Mehta
    Commented Jan 30, 2018 at 21:27
  • Why do you assume there is any layer where exchanging confidential information wouldn't require encryption?
    – Arminius
    Commented Jan 30, 2018 at 21:59

1 Answer 1

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The short answer is that yes, if you want secure communication using TCP you need to either implement application-level security or use SSL/TLS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol and see the right hand side of the page for a description of the different layers. TCP is on a fundamentally different layer than TLS/SSL.

As to how to do that in C or C++, that depends largely on what you're trying to accomplish and is too broad a question.

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  • But I'm not going beyond TCP layer.
    – Kumar Roshan Mehta
    Commented Jan 30, 2018 at 21:29
  • I'm not sure what you mean. What is the "But" in response to? You're not going beyond in which direction - higher or lower?
    – Russbear
    Commented Jan 30, 2018 at 21:40
  • Assume my endpoints and applications are secure. Can some man-in-middle attack can happen if I don't use SSL.
    – Kumar Roshan Mehta
    Commented Jan 30, 2018 at 21:43
  • Yes, absolutely.
    – Russbear
    Commented Jan 30, 2018 at 21:54

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