Securely connect to WebDAV servers

Apr 19, '02 09:15:03AM

Contributed by: twenex

I'm always a little concerned about using WebDAV services insecurely across HTTP. However, the Apple WebDAV client cannot use SSL ... until now. Just grab and install these two packages - OpenSSL and Stunnel. Both compile right up on Mac OS X, so just follow the instructions inside. After compiling, use the following Terminal command to start stunnel:

 % /usr/local/sbin/stunnel -c -d :1999 -r server:443
Replace server with the name of the system with the secure WebDAV service. Next, use the Connect to server command in the Finder and enter the following address:
 http://127.0.0.1:1999/service_name/
Replace service_name with the remainder of the WebDAV URL on the remote system.

This works by creating an insecure connection between the WebDAV client and stunnel, both running on your local machine, and a secure connection between stunnel and the remote machine. Note that iDisk does *not* support a secure connection, so this tip won't help with iDisk.

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