Gives a brief background on the state of secure communications, SSL, TLS, Public Key Infrastructure and x.509 certificates. Presents a series of short practical examples on how to use OpenSSL to generate and validate x.509 certificates.
The majority of the book focuses on practical implementations of OpenSSL in C, Perl, Python and PHP environments.
If you want to use OpenSSL to create a small Certificate Authority, "Network Security with OpenSSL" gives you what you need to do it. I successfully used this book to support a TLS/SSL3 Enabled FTP server.
I used chapters One (background), Two (basic commands) and Three (Public Key Infrastructure) to create my CA. Chapters Four through Ten explain how to use OpenSSL for programming.
"Network Security with OpenSSL" is not extremely thorough but by the same token it is not overwhelming to the novice.
I recommend this book if you want to create x.509 certificates for secure FTP or HTTPS. I cannot speak to the programming aspect of the book, but the knowledge that I gained on the creation of x.509 certificates and PKI justified the cost of the book to me.
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