1 SSL Release Notes

This document describes the changes made to the SSL application.

1.1 SSL 3.0.1

1.1.1 Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

• An unexpected object identifier would crash ssl:peercert.
  OwnId: OTP-4771.
  

1.1.2 Known Bugs and Problems

See SSL-3.0.

1.2 SSL 3.0

1.2.1 Improvements and New Features

• The cache_timout option was silently ignored. It had to do with SSL sessions, where multiple connections can occur. Since the Erlang SSL applicaton does not support sessions the option is still ignored, and consequently the documentation about it has been removed.
  OwnId: OTP-3146
  


• The Erlang SSL application is now based on OpenSSL version 0.9.7a. OpenSSL 0.9.6 should also work.
  OwnId: OTP-4002
  


• When connecting it is now possible to bind to a local address and local port.
  OwnId: OTP-4675
  


• The ssl_esock port program is now part of the distribution and thus does not have to be created explicitely. It is dynamically linked to OpenSSL libraries in a "standard" location (typically /usr/local/lib on UNIX; in the path on Win32).
  OwnId: OTP-4676
  


• The new functions ssl:peercert/1/2 provide information from the certificate of a peer of a connection.
  OwnId: OTP-4680
  Aux Id: seq7688
  


• The function ssl:port/1 has been removed from the documentation, but not from the ssl interface module. The recommendation is to use ssl:peername/1 instead, which provides both address and port of the peer.
  OwnId: OTP-4681
  


• New User's Guide documentation has been added.
  OwnId: OTP-4682
  


• The old ssl_socket interface has been removed and also the documentation of it.
  OwnId: OTP-4683
  


• The use of ephemeral RSA keys is now supported. It is a global configuration option (see the ssl(6) manual page).
  OwnId: OTP-4691.
  

1.2.2 Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

• The option cacertfile is now in effect, and can therefore no longer be set with the OS environment variable SSL_CERT_FILE (which did set the same value for all connections).
  OwnId: OTP-3146
  


• There was a syncronization error at closing of an SSL connnection.
  OwnId: OTP-4435
  Aux Id: seq7534
  


• C macros in debuglog.c were not ANSI C compliant.
  OwnId: OTP-4674
  


• The binary option was not properly handled.
  OwnId: OTP-4678
  


• The ssl:format_error/1 did not consider inet error codes, nor did it have a catch all for unknown error codes.
  OwnId: OTP-4679
  

1.2.3 Known Bugs and Problems

• Change of controlling process in not OTP compliant.
  OwnId; OTP-4712
  


• There is still no way to restrict the cipher sizes.
  OwnId: OTP-4712
  


• The keep_alive and reuse_addr options will be added in a future release.
  OwnId: OTP-4677
  


• There is currently no way to restrict the SSL/TLS protocol versions to use. In a future release this will be supported as a configuration option, and as an option for each connection as well.
  OwnId: OTP-4711.
  

1.3 SSL 2.3.6

1.3.1 Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

• There was a synchronization error at closing, which could result in that an SSL socket was removed prematurely, resulting in that a user process referring to it received an unexpected exit.
  OwnId: OTP-4435
  Aux Id: seq7600
  

1.3.2 Known Bugs and Problems

See SSL 2.2 .

1.4 SSL 2.3.5

1.4.1 Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

• Setting of the option `nodelay' caused the SSL port program to dump core.
  OwnId: OTP-4380
  Aux Id: -
  


• Setting of the option '{active, once}' in setopts was wrong, causing a correct socket message to be regarded as erroneous.
  OwnId: OTP-4380
  Aux Id: -
  


• A self-signed peer certificate was always rejected with the error `eselfsignedcert', irrespective of the `depth' value.
  OwnId: OTP-4374
  Aux Id: seq7417
  

1.4.2 Known Bugs and Problems

See SSL 2.2 .

1.5 SSL 2.3.4

1.5.1 Improvements and New Features

• All TCP options allowed in gen_tcp, are now also allowed in SSL, except the option {reuseaddr, Boolean}. A new function getopts has been added to the SSL interface module ssl.
  OwnId: OTP-4305, OTP-4159
  

1.6 SSL 2.3.3

1.6.1 Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

• The roles of the SSLeay and OpenSSL packages has been clarified in the ssl(6) application manual page. Also the URLs from which to download SSLeay has been updated.
  OwnId: OTP-4002
  Aux Id: seq5269
  


• A call to ssl:listen(Port, Options) with Options = [] resulted in the cryptic {error, ebadf} return value. The return value has been changed to {error, enooptions}, and the behaviour has been documented in the listen/2 function.
  OwnId: OTP-4016
  Aux Id: seq7006
  


• Use of the option {nodelay, boolean()} crashed the ssl_server.
  OwnId: OTP-4070
  Aux Id:
  


• A bug caused the Erlang distribution over ssl to fail. This bug has now been fixed.
  OwnId: OTP-4072
  Aux Id:
  


• On Windows when the SSL port program encountered an error code not anticipated it crashed.
  OwnId: OTP-4132
  Aux Id:
  

1.7 SSL 2.3.2

1.7.1 Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

• The ssl:accept/1-2 function sometimes returned {error, {What, Where}} instead of {error, What}, where What is an atom.
  OwnId: OTP-3775
  Aux Id: seq4991
  

1.8 SSL 2.3.1

1.8.1 Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

• Sometimes the SSL portprogram would loop in an accept loop, without terminating even when the SSL application was stopped..
  OwnId: OTP-3691
  

1.9 SSL 2.3

Functions have been added to SSL to experimentally support Erlang distribution.

1.10 SSL 2.2.1

The 2.2.1 version of SSL provides code replacement in runtime by upgrading from, or downgrading to, versions 2.1 and 2.2.

1.11 SSL 2.2

1.11.1 Improvements and New Features

• The restriction that only the creator of an SSL socket can read from and write to the socket has been lifted.
  OwnId: OTP-3301
  


• The option {packet, cdr} for SSL sockets has been added, which means that SSL sockets also supports CDR encoded packets.
  OwnId: OTP-3302
  

1.11.2 Known Bugs and Problems

• Setting of a CA certificate file with the cacertfile option (in calls to ssl:accept/1/2 or ssl:connect/3/4) does not work due to weaknesses in the SSLeay package.
  A work-around is to set the OS environment variable SSL_CERT_FILE before SSL is started. However, then the CA certificate file will be global for all connections.
  OwnId: OTP-3146
  


• When changing controlling process of an SSL socket, a temporary process is started, which is not gen_server compliant.
  OwnId: OTP-3146
  


• Although there is a cache timeout option, it is silently ignored.
  OwnId: OTP-3146
  


• There is currently no way to restrict the cipher sizes.
  OwnId: OTP-3146
  

1.12 SSL 2.1

1.12.1 Improvements and New Features

• The set of possible error reasons has been extended to contain diagnostics on erronous certificates and failures to verify certificates.
  OwnId: OTP-3145
  


• The maximum number of simultaneous SSL connections on Windows has been increased from 31 to 127.
  OwnId: OTP-3145
  

1.12.2 Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

• A dead-lock occuring when write queues are not empty has been removed.
  OwnId: OTP-3145
  


• Error reasons have been unified and changed.
  (** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY **)
  OwnId: OTP-3145
  


• On Windows a check of the existence of the environment variable ERLSRV_SERVICE_NAME has been added. If that variable is defined, the port program of the SSL application will not terminated when a user logs off.
  OwnId: OTP-3145
  


• An error in the setting of the nodelay option has been corrected.
  OwnId: OTP-3145
  


• The confounded notions of verify mode and verify depth has been corrected. The option verifydepth has been removed, and the two separate options verify and depth has been added.
  (** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY **)
  OwnId: OTP-3145
  

1.12.3 Known Bugs and Problems

• Setting of a CA certificate file with the cacertfile option (in calls to ssl:accept/1/2 or ssl:connect/3/4) does not work due to weaknesses in the SSLeay package.
  A work-around is to set the OS environment variable SSL_CERT_FILE before SSL is started. However, then the CA certificate file will be global for all connections.
  OwnId: OTP-3146
  


• When changing controlling process of an SSL socket, a temporary process is started, which is not gen_server compliant.
  OwnId: OTP-3146
  


• Although there is a cache timeout option, it is silently ignored.
  OwnId: OTP-3146
  


• There is currently no way to restrict the cipher sizes.
  OwnId: OTP-3146
  

1.13 SSL 2.0

A complete new version of SSL with separate I/O channels for all connections with non-blocking I/O multiplexing.