Preface

Web application programmers tend to focus on services when developing networking applications. Numerous services are designed to communicate with each other and are made available through service-oriented architectures. The emphasis on functionality has taken attention away from the production of secure and reliable systems. In this thesis, approaches to secure client-server communication will be presented. The important step is the development of an underlying infrastructure that can provide basic security mechanisms. An example framework in Java will be refined and improved throughout the text to show readers how to implement the concepts discussed. The intended audience for this thesis is students and IT professionals with an understanding of Public Key Infrastructures and Java programming. People with background in just one of these categories will have a harder time following the text, but are encouraged to continue reading. References are included throughout the document, enabling readers to go to the sources for an in-depth presentation. iii Acknowledgment