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.
Reflex is to say SSL but usually correct myself to TLS. Started in IT in 2006 (was a nerd a few years before that though)
Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)
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Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)
#92The situation is additionally confused by the fact that the version numbers do not give a good clue to how different the protocols were. Specifically: SSLv2 was the first widely deployed version of SSL, but as this post indicates, had a number of issues. SSLv3 is a more or less completely new protocol TLS 1.0 is much like SSLv3 but with some small revisions made during the IETF standardization process. TLS 1.1 is a r…
> Each of these protocols has been designed so that you could automatically negotiate versions, thus allowing for clients and servers to independently upgrade without loss of connectivity. And ensuring decades of various downgrade attacks
This was necessary to bypass various broken server side implementations, and broken middleboxes, but wasn’t necessarily a flaw in TLS itself.
But from the learnings of this issue preventing 1.2 deployment, TLS 1.3 goes out of its way to look very similar on the wire to 1.2
Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)
#93Curious, 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.
To devs: SSL
Did not start working before 1999. Started using Linux in 2003.
Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)
#94Wait, 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.
I think it’s fair to say they’re very similar, with a few “bug fixes”. It’s been a while since I’ve thought about either though, and might be forgetting a few things. I’ve only ever implemented SSL3 and TLS1.0 together, so there may be some details I’m forgetting.
Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)
#95Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think most people call it SSL because they use OpenSSL library to deal with secure communication have SSL in their names. Openssl being the most dominant one). Other libraries are BoringSSL, LibreSSL, wolfSSL etc. Libraries with TLS in their names are less frequently used GnuTLS, mbedTLS, s2n-tls and RustTLS.
SSL is used in websites. TlS is used in other applications, as in mTLS
Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
When TLS 1.3 was finally standardized, there was quite a bit of debate about whether in light of the how different it was from TLS 1.2 we should continue to use the 1.3 version number. ISTR that TLS 2 and TLS 4.0 were both floated--though I don't recall SSL 3.4--but eventually the WG decided to stick with the 1.3 version number we had been using throughout the rest of the process.
The version number in the protocol for TLS 1.3 is 03 04. TLS 1.0 is 03 01, and SSL 3.0 is 03 00. Hence "SSL 3.4".
Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)
#98I seem to remember that Microsoft's initial implementation used a field in the protocol in an incompatible way to encode that it was a different implementation. I remember people being annoyed at them for deliberately screwing up future compatibility. Does anyone remember the details of this?
Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Each of these protocols has been designed so that you could automatically negotiate versions, thus allowing for clients and servers to independently upgrade without loss of connectivity. And ensuring decades of various downgrade attacks
The downgrade attacks on TLS are only really present in the case of client behaviour where, on failing to achieve one version, they retry a new connection without it. This was necessary to bypass various broken server side implementations, and broken middleboxes, but wasn’t necessarily a flaw in TLS itself. But from the learnings of this issue preventing 1.2 deployment, TLS 1.3 goes out of its way to look very simila…
Re: Why SSL was renamed to TLS in late 90s (2014)
#100Wouldn't it be appropriate now to call the next version SSL again? It's still widely used by everyone, so let them keep using it.