SSL/TLS protocol support is usually added to the server application when the services it provides assumes transmission of sensitive data such as passwords, credit card numbers, personal data, and so on, by the client to the server. In this case, adding SSL/TLS protocol support to the server allows clients to authenticate the server and establish a secure channel to make sure that the sensitive data is protected while being transmitted.

Sometimes, a server application may want to use SSL/TLS protocol to authenticate the client; however, this is rarely the case and usually other methods are used to ensure the authenticity of the client (for example, username and password are specified when logging into a mail server).

This recipe demonstrates how to implement a synchronous iterative TCP server application supporting SSL/TLS protocol using the Boost.Asio and OpenSSL libraries. The synchronous iterative TCP server application demonstrated in the recipe...