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

tim.dierks.org

131–140 of 237 posts

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

#131
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.

TLS probably. 2004

I think the TLS v1.2 pushed me that way

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

#132
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…

TLS1.0 introduced modularity via the concept of "extensions". It's everything but a minor evolution of the protocol.

One of the many things it brought is session tickets, enabling server-side session resumption without requiring servers to keep synced-up state. Another is Server Name Indication, enabling servers to use more than one certificate.

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

#133
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SSL 42-started studying security in mid 90s as a teen started working 2000

Ah yes, it was a grand time, freeform studying IT security as a teen in the 90s!

It’s probably a good thing I didn’t have the knowledge/skills I have now, it might have saved me from trouble. Back in those days I was more interested in getting Back Orfice to remotely open a CD-ROM tray on a friend’s computer. I remember when broadband was first being rolled out it seemed like everyone was hooking up their cable/DSL modems directly to their PC and having a public IP with no firewall. Good times.

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

#134
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. I’m old enough to remember 56-bit SSL encryption in browsers

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

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could deploy a new version, you'd just have older clients unable to connect to servers implementing the newer versions. It wouldn't have been insane to rename https to httpt or something after TLS 1.2 and screw backwards compatibility (yes I realize the 's' stands for secure, not 'ssl', but httpt would have still worked as "HTTP with TLS")

> It wouldn't have been insane to rename https to httpt or something after TLS 1.2 and screw backwards compatibility That would have been at least little bit insane, since then web links would be embedding the protocol version number. As a result, we'd need to keep old versions of TLS around indefinitely to make sure old URLs still work. I wish we could go the other way - and make http:// implicitly use TLS when TLS…

Regarding your last paragraph: Isn’t that pretty much solved thanks to HSTS preload? A non-technical author of a small recipe blog might not know how to set it up, but a bank ought to have staff (and auditors) who takes care of stuff like that.

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

#136
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.

They should be saying X.509 certificate though. I think I say "server certificate" most of the time.

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

#137

People who make a strong distinction between TLS and SSL are indicating that they know the difference and think you should too, but at a practical level it's the difference between .doc and .docx (fundamentally different but interchangeable to the layman). The boots on the ground mostly care about getting https to work and have minimal consideration for it's inner workings.

The main issue was explaining to the layman that TLSv1.0 was in fact newer and better than SSLv2 and SSLv3. I remember having quite a few discussions about this with people who assumed that the bigger number must be better..

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

#138
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…

It's a new word in version churn: rename the whole thing on every commit.

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

#139
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

When a company repeatedly demonstrates a pattern of embracing, extending, and extinguishing standards (see: Java, Kerberos, HTML), it’s fair to view any technical move with suspicion - even if the particular proposal seems technically sound. It’s easy to retroactively view Netscape’s resistance as petty, but the power imbalance was real, and the fear of Microsoft co-opting the standard wasn’t paranoia.

Some companies make abuse a business model. I don't see how anyone can defend a position where they only look at isolated actions of a company and not their overall strategic positioning. There are boundaries. Ethical boundaries. If you never experience the consequences of your actions, if nobody ever objects to your behavior, you will not stop. Especially not a distributed organism of a company, which has no inherent ethical boundaries; its boundaries are those that affect business, so you need to teach them in business. If your business model is based on treating your own employees like slaves, it is you who is cancer, not the other.

Calling that “kid-like behavior” is misguided on two levels. First, as noted, Netscape’s actions were arguably rational in context - pushing back against a powerful incumbent trying to steer an open standard toward a proprietary implementation.

Second, the phrase itself leans on a dismissive and inaccurate stereotype. Kids aren’t inherently irrational or overly emotional; in fact, there’s substantial research showing that young people behave quite logically given their environment. Framing behavior this way isn’t just lazy; it reinforces the kind of condescension that later gets labeled as “adverse childhood experiences” in therapy, assuming someone even gets the chance to unpack and not replicate it.

On both levels, it is DARVO.

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

#140
post #126

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…

Man in the middle interfering with TLS handshakes? The handshake is unencrypted so you can modify the messages to make it look like the server only supports broken ciphers. Then the man in the middle can read all of the encrypted data because it was badly encrypted. A surprising number of servers still support broken ciphers due to legacy uses or incompetence.

You could encrypt the handshake that you recieved with the server's certificate and send it back. Then if it doesn't match what the server thought it sent it aborts the handshake. As long as the server's cert isn't broken this would detect a munged handshake, and if the server's cert is broken you have no root of trust to start the connection in the first place.
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