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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-28T14:20:08+00:00

I need a security protocol where the client authenticates before the server. This is

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I need a security protocol where the client authenticates before the server. This is necessary because its a matter of privacy. I dont want any unknown party to know who they are connecting to unless they are allowed to know. In the TLS protocol, the server send his cert first thereby eliminating this possibility. I know enough to know that implementing my own protocol is a bad idea. However, is there a choice? I.e. is there a way to alter the protocol to send the certs in the other order? Wikipidea reference to TLS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security#Client-authenticated_TLS_handshake

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  1. Editorial Team

    You could reverse the roles of the client and server.

    Normally, with TCP, the client is the endpoint that did connect() (and send a SYN) and the server is the endpoint that did accept() (it received the SYN and sent back a SYN|ACK). But once the connection is established, there is no longer any difference between the client’s socket and the server’s socket.

    If you’re using, say, OpenSSL, you normally call SSL_connect() after a successful connect() and you normally call SSL_accept() after a successful accept(). But if you flip that around and call SSL_accept() after connect() on the client side and call SSL_connect() after accept() on the server side, OpenSSL will never know the difference. And the client will behave as a TLS server and identify itself first.

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