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SSL Configuration Generator
- quesera 11mo agoThis looks like something that's been around forever, but it's the first time I've seen it. xkcd://{{derive_from_context}} It's a great idea. I've created (or copied) at least half of these output formats, a few of which I remember being annoyingly difficult to surface from the project docs. But in the moment today, it's mostly interesting to see the different ways of saying the same things in various configuration languages. And thinking that this might be why so many people with different brains find the technology world so obtuse and off-putting. The joke's on them, of course. We like it this way! (Never wrestle with a pig...)
- accrual 11mo agoWhy are we still using the term "SSL" anywhere? It feels immediately like someone forgot the last 10 years of tech.
- jof 11mo agoSSL was developed by Netscape in the 90s and evolved into TLS. Netscape Navigator essentially evolved into Mozilla. "They've" been at it from the beginning, so it somehow seems understandable that Mozilla has a lot of "SSL" momentum or carryover.
- zobzu 11mo agoactually we wrote this many years ago and left mozilla ans nobody is really updating it other than adding new configs. its not super useful anymore :) at the time it made sense to us because you couldnt have good SSL configuration everywhere (it was not well supported) so we had trade-offs and created tiers of configs. We barely had TLS coming out, so SSL eas still the name of the game. nowaday just use the latest TLS defaults and you're golden.
- meepmorp 11mo agoI tend to expand TLS thread-local storage, so SSL is less confusing for me.
- tempest_ 11mo agoThe main answer is a lot of the software on that page predates SSLs deprecation and people (sysadmins especially, because they wrote some bash script 20 years ago and want it to keep working) like backwards compatibility.
- ranger_danger 11mo agoI think the bigger answer is certificate vendors won't stop using the term.
- tempest_ 11mo agoMaybe, but who is actually still buying tls certs from a vendor?
- ranger_danger 11mo agoLots of people, I certainly don't trust free providers, and I think it's a lot less likely that malware will use a non-free cert, so some people trust those more. Plus there are email, code-signing and other cert types that aren't provided for free.
- ekr____ 11mo agoWhat does it mean not to trust Let's Encrypt in this case? What is it you are concerned they will do?
- ranger_danger 11mo agoI worry that the CA is somehow compromised (state actor holding private keys, etc).
- nixosbestos 11mo agoI would have that concern, at minimum 100x more with random shitty unreliable SSL providers, than those being run by literal huge nerds and non-profits. Your analysis here is thin and lazy and that's being generous to your analysis.
- shoddydoordesk 11mo ago[flagged]
- tptacek 11mo agoThat's the opposite of what happened with TLS.
- shoddydoordesk 11mo agoSurely you mustn't be referring to OpenSSL, which was forked multiple times — under duress — to maintain the safety and security of the web.
- tptacek 11mo agoTLS != OpenSSL. I don't concede the rest of your comment, but we don't reach it, because I wasn't making a point about OpenSSL.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 11mo agoIf OpenSSL were dispoed of,^1 then where would that leave "TLS" 1. For example if software stopped linking to OpenSSL libraries instead of alternatives "OpenSSL" (the library as well as the binary) is quite "bloated" compared to WolfSSL, LibreSSL, BoringSSL, etc. If the name "TLS" signifies something meaningful then why do the majority of TLS-implementing projects still include "SSL" in their name
- kittikitti 11mo agoI had to double check my nginx configuration and the variables use SSL in the names even though I define the protocol to be TLS. I have the certbot commands and their naming conventions use SSL. Perhaps you've never actually implemented SSL or TLS and just use the latest tech jargon to fake understanding?
- trenchpilgrim 11mo agoTLS is basically SSL 4. They only changed the name to signal the backwards incompatibility.
- ekr____ 11mo agoNot quite. The name was changed from SSL to TLS as part of the adoption in IETF. I imagine different people had different motivations, but in part it was a signal that it was going to be controlled by IETF rather than Netscape. As far as compatibility goes, TLS is backward compatible with SSLv3 [0] in that the client can send a ClientHello that is acceptable to both SSLv3 and TLS servers and the server can select the version to use. Re: the version number, we're now on TLS 1.3, so I guess that would be SSLv7. [0] The situation is more complicated with SSLv2, which had a different ClientHello format.
- gerdesj 11mo agoYou might as well decry "Hoover" for a vacuum cleaner. I haven't seen a Hoover for way longer than SSL -> TLS. OK I have but I blanked it!
- bombcar 11mo agoI’m going to xerox this Kleenex. I think xerox still exits but darn if I haven’t seen one in ages.
- waste_monk 11mo agoThe printers still exist, but the branding is deprecated. Xerox -> Fuji-Xerox -> FUJIFILM Business Innovation
- IgorPartola 11mo agoI did this recently then put it in my Tupperware (which most people have never seen or used since it was only sold at those at home Tupperware parties and not at stores).
- BobbyTables2 11mo agoBecause “OpenSSL” was too lazy to rename themselves to “OpenTLS”
- weddpros 11mo agoThat's good! I'll use TLS when OpenSSL gets renamed :-D (I own many SSL domains and projects)
- voidfunc 11mo agoGood luck renaming OpenSSL...
- wiether 11mo agoI'm one of the few using "TLS", but it's hard. When doing this, you see that some people feel that you are being pedantic. And the biggest issue is that it creates confusion. During calls with customers, when I tell that we're going to setup their TLS certs, they reply, worried: "no, we need SSL certs!". I see it as another chicken & egg situation: regular people don't know about TLS, and business are afraid of communicating about TLS because they don't want their customer going elsewhere because they don't understand what TLS is and want SSL I went on Cloudflare to try and illustrate this, and it's... complicated https://www.cloudflare.com/application-services/products/ssl/ https://www.cloudflare.com/application-services/products/ssl... The path says SSL but most of the page it about TLS, unless sometimes it's SSL...
- weddpros 11mo agoThere are no TLS certs, it's x509 certs :) SSL certificate is still the name used by everybody though. For the protocol, TLS is correct (apart from SSLv3 which is very deprecated).
- foofoo12 11mo agoBack in the day, SSL didn't exists. When it came into existence, it was quite an expensive novelty. It became a generic name that everyone knew for encrypted HTTP connections. It still is a generic name for that, even though the underlying protocol changed name to TLS.
- homebrewer 11mo agoTLS is a Microsoftie term. I use SSL out of stubbornness. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44282378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44282378
- m_sahaf 11mo agoElGamal says he uses them interchangeably. He says TLS exists for historical reasons, but the essence of the technology is the same. I got into the habit of using SSL/TLS.
- nurettin 11mo agoSSL is not going away, might as well forget TLS instead. https://www.fortinet.com/resources/cyberglossary/ssl-vpn https://www.fortinet.com/resources/cyberglossary/ssl-vpn
- ssl-3 11mo agoI use it all the time.
- Bender 11mo agoIn a similar spirit there is also a site to scan security headers of any site [1] and another to verify the TLS settings from the Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator [2] and a git repo with code to scan sites from the command line [3] useful if the site is not reachable on the internet or automated scans to HTML reports. [1] - https://securityheaders.com/ https://securityheaders.com/ [2] - https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/ https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/ [3] - https://github.com/testssl/testssl.sh https://github.com/testssl/testssl.sh
- bawolff 11mo agoHonestly, i disagree with the security headers one. Various security headers do different things and should not be applied blindly. While some are always appropriate there are also some that make sense to skip depending on what specificly your site is doing. Not to mention, when i looked at the hall of fame entries, most had a CSP header, but it was a useless CSP header that was meaningless. It doesn't seem to distinguish between having the header and actually using it correctly.
- Calamityjanitor 11mo agoThis was always my pet peeve when working as a penetration tester. We'd run simple tools like this to cover the basics, but so many coworkers would blindly copy paste the issues without considering the site's context and suitability. Not to knock their skills, they'd find real vulnerabilities too. It's just that this stuff was considered beneath them, while I felt that giving a client tailored advice on little details like this is what they were looking for and shows attention to detail.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- poink 11mo agoAs a security conscious dev that has worked in various highly regulated spaces I want to say we really appreciate people like you, because they’re super rare
- QuantumNomad_ 11mo agoI don’t see any option in this config generator for mTLS (mutual TLS, where you use client certificates in addition to server certificates). Perhaps it is too niche of a thing. Sadly. It really is quite useful in some situations.
- zdc1 11mo agoTheir "AWS ELB" seems to be a Classic Load Balancer; probably not the best term to use. The "AWS ALB" is an Application Load Balancer, of course.
- captn3m0 11mo agoI think this existed before the ALB was announced, and doesn’t see that many updates.
- benatkin 11mo agoThanks Mozilla, I don't know what I would do if I couldn't generate a config for Apache 420 with OpenSSL 69.
- superlukas99 11mo ago[dead]
- ajsnigrutin 11mo agoHow do these configs differ to server defaults? If some really bad settings are enabled by default (thus needing this custom config), shouldn't it be better just to have the server-software devs fix the defaults to be 'good enough' (for most)?
- mholt 11mo agoGreat question. Servers should ship with secure defaults.
- jms703 11mo agoThis has been around for a long time. Kudos to the folks that built it. It served a need at the time and made a big impact on improving configurations for people that didn't understand the myriad of ways to setup ssl/tls.
- anonymous344 11mo agowhy the site's back button doesn't work?
- nick238 11mo agoIt does, but every time you click on a new option it's a new URL. So if you poke around a bit, you may have generated dozens of entries in the history.
- kitd 11mo agoA similar too for OpenSSL config would be great
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- mxey 11mo agoProper configuration of cryptography should not be abdicated to application developers or operators: https://go.dev/blog/tls-cipher-suites https://go.dev/blog/tls-cipher-suites > The Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator is great, and it should not exist.
- Avamander 11mo agoNot only is it difficult to make an informed choice, it also incurs a maintenance cost. Cost which is often not paid, resulting in configuration that becomes increasingly sub-optimal as time passes and the SSL/TLS library is updated. I'm fairly certain that when that generator was made (or article written), OpenSSL and similar already had ciphersuite presets one could use. So it is a bit odd that the generator is not enhancing those. As an example, in the case of OpenSSL you can combine presets such as "HIGH" with your additional preferences. Such as avoiding non-PFS key exchanges, DoS risks, SHA1 phase out or less frequently used block ciphers. Result being something like "HIGH:!kRSA:!kEDH:!SHA1:!CAMELLIA:!ARIA". Optionally one can also bump up global "SECLEVEL" in OpenSSL's configuration. Such a combination helps avoid issues like accidentally crippling operations when an ECC key(/cert) is used and someone forgot to allow ECDHE+ECDSA in addition to ECDHE+RSA. Nor does it accidentally disable strong ciphersuites using ChaCha20 that aren't as old. Same goes for key exchange configuration. Quite a few servers don't have EdDSA available that don't run Windows, I suspect it's because they were set at some point and forgotten. Now such configuration also disables post-quantum hybrid key exchange algorithms.
- blfr 11mo agoThey also have configs for ssh, although without the cool generator. https://infosec.mozilla.org/guidelines/openssh https://infosec.mozilla.org/guidelines/openssh
- egberts1 11mo agoit is amazing that Chrome 80 still hasn’t upgrade its OpenSSL to v1.1.1.
- danielhlockard 11mo agoIs there some specific reason to use Chrome v80?
- egberts1 11mo agoEnterprise Standard Release
- yread 11mo agoWhy are they recommending SSLHonorCipherOrder Off ?
- homebrewer 11mo agoSame reason they recommend the similar directive for nginx: > all the ciphers in Modern and Intermediate are secure. As such, we let the client choose the most performant cipher suite for their hardware configuration. https://github.com/mozilla/server-side-tls/issues/260#issuecomment-507392266 https://github.com/mozilla/server-side-tls/issues/260#issuec... https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS
- Avamander 11mo agoThere's no need for that. The choice between ChaCha20 and AES can be left to the clients with the "PrioritizeChaCha" option. On both OpenSSL and BoringSSL, likely similar options are available with other libraries as well. Anything else such as not enforcing any preference is unnecessary.
- eqvinox 11mo agoIt's sad-funny that they include OCSP stapling when ~browsers~^W Let's Encrypt have decided to eradicate OCSP (including stapled OCSP) :(.
- nick238 11mo agoFeels like server developers should include turnkey configurations where you just give maybe a year/quarter and compatibility target (secure, medium, loose). Needing to cha-cha your salsas, 128 to the 256 to the 1305...picking SSL ciphers is the biggest cargo-cult thing ever. I have no clue what I am doing.
- sevg 11mo agoThis and their Server Side TLS page have been a staple in my playbook for the last decade! https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS Such useful resources.