Connecting to HTTPS with netcat (nc)

Question

I'm working on homework assignment for my collage. Task is to fetch web page on HTTPS using nc (netcat).

To fetch page on HTTP you I do this:

cat request.txt | nc -w 5 <someserver> 80

In request.txt I have HTTP 1.1 request

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: <someserver>

Now... This works fine. How can I fetch web page that uses HTTPS?

I get page certificate like this. And this is the point in witch I'm stuck

openssl s_client -connect <someserver>:443

Answer 1

nc doesn't do https. openssl s_client is as close as you'll get. Do something like this:

$ cat request.txt | openssl s_client -connect server:443

Answer 2

You probably want to use stunnel.

A GNU program allowing to encrypt arbitrary TCP connections inside Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).

http://www.stunnel.org

It's very UNIX-y. One great tool for one simple task.

Answer 3

Ask the prof or TA for assistance. You would never try to do HTTPS over netcat in the real world (openssl s_client would be my first-line tool of choice, but there are other options) so the chances of finding the "right" answer that the prof wants by asking people in the real world is low. I'd probably go over all the slides/notes from the lectures; typically these sorts of "impossible" questions are actually answered in the lectures, and asked just to see who is actually paying attention in class.