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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)

#101
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.

Nobody ever says "TLS Certificate". It's only an "SSL Certificate". On that alone, it's just easier to stick to "SSL" for consistency and everyone knows what you mean.

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

#102
post #61

The 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…

Well, at least they were not just versioned by year number. ;)

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

#103

Earlier 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…

If a protocol is widely used wrongly, I consider it a flaw in the protocol. But overall, SSL standardization has gone decently well. I always bring it up as a good example to contrast with XMPP as a bad example.

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

#104
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Moreover, there's not really much in the way of choices here. If you don't have this kind of automatic version negotiation then it's essentially impossible to deploy a new version.

Depends on what you mean by "this kind" because you want a way to detect attacker-forced downgrades and that used to be missing.

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

#105
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.

SSL, born 1997

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

#107
post #82

Earlier 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

TLS is absolutely used in websites, and I'm pretty sure modern browsers refuse to use any version of SSL.

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

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If a protocol is widely used wrongly, I consider it a flaw in the protocol. But overall, SSL standardization has gone decently well. I always bring it up as a good example to contrast with XMPP as a bad example.

Well, my only real point is that it’s not the version negotiation in TLS that’s broken. It’s the workaround for intolerance of newer versions that had downgrade attacks.

Fortunately that’s all behind us now, and transitioning from 1.2 to 1.3 is going much smoother than 1.0 to 1.2 went.

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

#109
post #68

> 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…

> But Netscape in this instance acted like kids Oh, please. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft The "velvet sweatshop" one is sufficient, but plenty of others to choose from. Don't have a source at hand but I remember it was known for its "work 3 years there and then you need to retire early from burnout" culture. There's also a really good (and highly depressing) 2001 German documentary around that…

You quoted "in this instance" and then cited completely unrelated problems?

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

#110
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, even though I know the difference. More accurately, I know there is a difference, but SSL gets the point across.

2) before 1999. IIRC, the first SSL certificate I was involved with getting required the use of a fax machine.

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