D. Stussy wrote:
> "buck" <buck@private.mil> wrote in message
> news:Xns9A817A6F1EBACbuckprivatemil@64.209.0.81...
>> I have googled and not found anything appropriate. If anyone can supply
>> some keywords for my search, please do.
>>
>> stunnel connects to news.newsguy.com on port 563. How can I know that
> this
>> transmission is encrypted?
>
> By DEFINITION.

Not quite. SSL allows the NULL cipher, which is no encryption.

Of course, it has to be offered by the server and selected by the
client. I don't know of any admins who enable it on their servers, but
I can't speak authoritatively about all servers everywhere.

Example: Assuming you use Firefox (I use 1.5.0.x, so YMMV), go to
about:config and filter on security.ssl. Notice that there are NULL
encryption options available. (Hopefully they are disabled, but they
exist.)

Example: Apache uses "aNULL" for the algorithm NULL SSL option. It is
also disabled by default, but you can turn it on if you want. (I
believe stunnel uses the same options and defaults.)

Why would you want to use SSL without encryption? I suppose you could
use it for certificate-based client authentication only, without
encryption. I don't know anyone who does, but, hey, if you want, you can.