How SSL Encryption Works

Parts Now! uses the industry’s most secure measures, 128-bit security protocol Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), to encode sensitive information like your credit card number that passes between you and the www.partsnow.com web site. SSL works by creating a temporary, shared "key" (sort of a digital code book) that lets only the computers on either end of a transmission scramble and unscramble information. To anyone between the sender and the receiver including all the servers that may relay the message the SSL transmission is indecipherable gibberish.

Here's how Secure Sockets Layer works:

• Exchanging "Hellos"

When your browser lands on a secure Web page within our web site, our server hosting www.partsnow.com sends a "hello request" to your browser. The browser replies with a "client hello." In networked environments (and the Web is the granddaddy of all networked environments), individual PCs are often called "clients." The Parts Now! server, ever the polite one, responds with a "server hello."

Exchanging all these "hellos" lets your browser and the Parts Now! web page determine the encryption and compression standards they both support. They also exchange a "session ID," a unique identifier for that specific interaction. Once they have greeted each other, your browser asks for the Parts Now! server's "digital certificate." It's the online commerce version of saying "Can I see some ID, please?"

• A Digital Certificate

Parts Now!’s digital certificate is from a Certificate Authority, VeriSign Inc. As a Certificate Authority, VeriSign verified Parts Now!'s identification and then issued a unique certificate as proof of our identity.

• Sharing the Key

After your browser and the Parts Now! server have shaken hands and your browser has checked our digital certificate, your browser uses information in our digital certificate to encrypt a message back to us that only the Parts Now! server can understand. Using that information, the browser and the server create a "master key." This master key is like a codebook that both sides can use to encode and decode transmissions. Only your browser and the Parts Now! server share that master key and it is good only for that session. Using the unique, shared key, your browser and the Parts Now! server can exchange sensitive information, like your credit card number, in a way third parties can't understand.

When you surf off a secure site, the master keys you once held in common become useless, since they are good for one session only. When you go back to the secure site again, your computer and the Parts Now! server will go through the whole process again and create another master key.

• Is it Safe?

SSL makes your online purchases extremely safe. The way to break an SSL encryption is with brute force by intercepting the encrypted message containing your credit card number, recording it and then using a computer to try every possible combination until the master key is cracked. To combat even that approach, our key is 128 digits long (each digit is either a 1 or a 0), allowing for septillions of combinations.

We believe strongly in the safety of SSL. Encryption technology continues to evolve, however, so you can count on Parts Now! to continuously review ways to improve security.