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Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)

tim.dierks.org

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Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)

#22
post #17

Oh wow, I just discovered that my brain unconsciously had a hard time to differentiate between SSL and TLS. And now, after two friggin decades I find out, why!

Same. I feel so dumb now. After 15 years in this industry i finally figured out that ssl and tls are the same.

No no, they're not. They're names of specific protocols with specific capabilities and versions. "SSL 1.0" and "TLS 1.0" are very different. (see https://aws.amazon.com/compare/the-difference-between-ssl-an...)

The important bits:

- "SSL" is a set of protocols so ridiculously old, busted and insecure that nobody should ever use them. It's like talking about Sanskrit; ancient and dead.

- "TLS" is way better than "SSL", but still there are insecure versions. Any version before 1.2 is no longer supported due to security holes.

- Technically an "ssl certificate" is neither "SSL" nor "TLS", it's really an "X.509 Certificate with Extended Key Usage: Server Authentication". But that doesn't roll off the tongue. You could use a cert from 1996 in a modern TLS server; the problem would be its expiration date, and the hash/signature functions used back then are deprecated. (some servers still support insecure methods to support older clients, which is bad)

Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)

#24

> As a part of the cutthroat competition, Microsoft decided to revise the SSL 2 protocol with some additions of their own, and specified a protocol called "PCT" that was derived from SSL 2. It was only supported in IE and IIS. > Netscape also wanted to address SSL 2 issues, but wasn't going to let Microsoft take leadership/ownership in the standard, so they developed SSL 3.0, which was a more significant departure. I…

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice?

Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)

#25

Related Randomness and the Netscape Browser January 1996 Dr. Dobb's Journal https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/ddj-netscape.ht... This was written in 1996. The language used feels already much different from today's publications. God I feel old.

> This was written in 1996. The language used feels already much different from today's publications. God I feel old.

That depends on which publications you're looking at, just as it did in 1996. An article from LWN [1] today, for example, reads in a fairly similar style. Maybe slightly less stuffy, because it's targeted at a slightly more general audience.

[1] https://lwn.net/

Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)

#26

Wait, but didn't TLS 1.0 have significant improvements over SSL 3.0? The article makes it seems that just a couple of things were tweaked just to make it different for the sake of being different.

Indeed there are significant changes and improvements, though it’s not a complete redesign like SSL 3.0 was.

Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)

#28
post #27

Curious, when you tell someone they need to access a website securely (or any other case where you might use the term TLS or SSL), do you: 1. Say SSL or TLS? 2. How old are you (or did you start working before 1999?) I'll reply with my answer too.

1. SSL

2. Started working before 1999

Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)

#29
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I feel so dumb now. After 15 years in this industry i finally figured out that ssl and tls are the same.

No no, they're not. They're names of specific protocols with specific capabilities and versions. "SSL 1.0" and "TLS 1.0" are very different. (see https://aws.amazon.com/compare/the-difference-between-ssl-an... ) The important bits: - "SSL" is a set of protocols so ridiculously old, busted and insecure that nobody should ever use them. It's like talking about Sanskrit; ancient and dead. - "TLS" is way better than "SSL…

Right, but they accomplish the same thing and people move monotonically from SSL to TLS. It’s not like choosing between React and Angular, but like choosing between React version 5 and React version 10 for a new project. SSL and TLS are the same in all meaningful respects from this perspective.
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