SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) are both protocols for establishing secure connections between a client and a server over the internet. The main difference between SSL and TLS is that TLS is the newer and more secure protocol.
SSL was developed by Netscape in the 1990s and was widely used to secure online transactions, such as e-commerce purchases, online banking, and other sensitive activities that involve transmitting confidential information over the internet. However, SSL has several known security vulnerabilities, and it has been largely replaced by the newer and more secure TLS protocol.
TLS was developed as a successor to SSL and was designed to address the security vulnerabilities found in earlier versions of SSL. TLS is a more secure protocol and provides stronger encryption, better authentication, and improved key exchange mechanisms. TLS is backward-compatible with SSL, which means that TLS can be used in place of SSL to provide backward compatibility with older systems that do not support TLS.
In summary, SSL and TLS are both protocols for securing internet communication, but TLS is the newer and more secure protocol and has largely replaced SSL in modern internet applications.