I took a quick look at using SSL with MySQL, and it turns out to be reasonably simple to enable SSL for transport level encryption, while still using username and password for authentication. Read on for some links to useful articles for MySQL, Java, Perl, Ruby on Rails and some sad news about PHP.

MySQL

The mysql CLI client can be configured to use SSL. Configuring SSL support in my.cnf is also usually the first step in getting the libraries to use SSL too.

• http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/secure-using-ssl.html
• http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/grant.html

Java

• http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?39,141087,178594#msg-178594
• http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/connector-j-reference-using-ssl.html

Perl

• http://www.codingforums.com/archive/index.php/t-143931.html

Rails

• http://blog.aisleten.com/2008/05/25/connecting-to-mysql-using-ssl-encryption-in-ruby-on-rails/
• http://www.williambharding.com/blog/rails/guide-to-setup-rails-with-mysql-ssl/

PHP

Needs a patch to the mysql module, although the mysqli module has a mysqli_options call with a MYSQLI_READ_DEFAULT_FILE option which can be used to enable SSL.

• http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=28075&edit=1