Transport Layer Security

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS), its successor, are cryptographic protocols which provide secure communications on the Internet. There are only slight differences between SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0, but they are not interchangeable. The term "SSL" as used here applies to both protocols unless clarified by context.

Contents

1 Description

2 How it works

3 Applications

4 History and development

Description

SSL provides endpoint authentication and communications privacy over the Internet using cryptography. In typical use, only the server is authenticated (i.e. its identity is ensured) while the client remains unauthenticated; mutual authentication requires PKI deployment to clients. The protocols allow client/server applications to communicate in a way designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery.

SSL involves a number of basic phases:

Peer negotiation for algorithm support
Public key encryption-based key exchange and certificate-based authentication
Symmetric cipher-based traffic encryption

During the first phase, the client and server negotiate which cryptographic algorithms will be used. Current implementations support the following choices:

for public-key cryptography: RSA, Diffie-Hellman, DSA or Fortezza;
for symmetric ciphers: RC2, RC4, IDEA, DES, Triple DES or AES;
for one-way hash functions: MD5 or SHA.

How it works

The TLS protocol exchanges records, each record can be optionally compressed, encrypted and packed with a MAC. Each record has a content_type field that specifies which upper level protocol is being used.

When the connection starts, the record level encapsulates another protocol, the handshake protocol, which has content_type 22.

The client sends and receives several handshake structures:

It sends a ClientHello message specifying the list of cipher suites, compression methods and the highest protocol version it supports. It also sends random bytes which will be used later.

Then it receives a ServerHello, in which the server chooses the connection parameters from the choices offered by the client earlier.

When the connection parameters are known, client and server exchange certificates (depending on the selected public key cipher). These certificates are currently X.509, but there's also a draft specifying the use of OpenPGP ones.

The server can request a certificate from the client, so that the connection can be mutually authenticated.

Client and server negotiate a common secret called "master secret". All other key data is derived from this secret (and the client- and server-generated random values), which is passed through a carefuly designed "Pseudo Random Function".

TLS has a variety of security measures:

Numbering all the records and using the sequence number in the MACs.
Using a message digest enhanced with a key (so only with the key you can check the MAC). This is specified in RFC 2104).
Protection against several known attacks (including man in the middle attacks), like those involving a downgrade of the protocol to previous (less secure) versions, or weaker cipher suites.
The message that ends the handshake ("Finished") sends a hash of all the exchanged data seen by both parties.
The pseudo random function splits the input data in 2 halves and processes them with different hashing algorithms (MD5 and SHA), then XORs them together. This way it protects itself in the event that one of these algorithms is found vulnerable.

Applications

SSL runs on layers beneath application protocols such as HTTP, SMTP and NNTP and above the TCP transport protocol, which forms part of the TCP/IP protocol suite. While it can add security to any protocol that uses TCP, it is most commonly used with HTTP to form HTTPS. HTTPS is used to secure World Wide Web pages for applications such as Electronic commerce. It uses public key certificates to verify the identity of endpoints.

While an increasing number of client and server products can support SSL natively, many still do not. In these cases, a user may wish to use standalone SSL products like Stunnel to provide encryption.

SSL can also be used to tunnel an entire network stack to create a VPN, as is the case with OpenVPN.

History and development

Developed by Netscape, SSL version 3.0 was released in 1996, which later served as a basis to develop TLS version 1.0, an IETF standard protocol first defined in RFC 2246. Visa, MasterCard, American Express and many leading financial institutions have endorsed SSL for commerce over the Internet.

SSL operates in modular fashion: its authors designed it for extendability, with support for forwards and backwards compatibility and negotiation between peers.

Early weak keys

Some early implementations of SSL could use a maximum of only 40-bit symmetric keys because of US government restrictions on the export of cryptographic technology. The US government explicitly imposed a 40-bit keyspace small enough to be broken by brute-force search by law enforcement agencies wishing to read the encrypted traffic, while still presenting obstacles to less-well-funded attackers. A similar limitation applied to Lotus Notes in export versions. After several years of public controversy, a series of lawsuits, and eventual US government recognition of changes in the market availability of 'better' cryptographic products (within and without the US), the authorities relaxed some aspects of the export restrictions. The 40-bit key size limitation has mostly gone away. Modern implementations use 128-bit (or longer) keys for symmetric key ciphers.

Standards

The first definition of TLS appeared in RFC 2246: "The TLS Protocol Version 1.0".

Other RFCs subsequently extended TLS, including:

RFC 2712: "Addition of Kerberos Cipher Suites to Transport Layer Security (TLS)". The 40-bit ciphersuites defined in this memo appear only for the purpose of documenting the fact that those ciphersuite codes have already been assigned.
RFC 2817: "Upgrading to TLS Within HTTP/1.1", explains how to use the Upgrade mechanism in HTTP/1.1 to initiate Transport Layer Security (TLS) over an existing TCP connection. This allows unsecured and secured HTTP traffic to share the same well known port (in this case, http: at 80 rather than https: at 443).
RFC 2818: "HTTP Over TLS", distinguishes secured traffic from insecure traffic by the use of a different 'server port'.
RFC 3268: "AES Ciphersuites for TLS". Adds Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) ciphersuites to the previously existing symmetric ciphers.

External links

Secure Socket Layer - history and use of the SSL protocol
The IETF TLS Workgroup
SSL Acceleration and Offloading
RFC 2246 - The TLS Protocol, Version 1.0
SSL 3.0 specification
SSL Security Forum
The GNU Transport Layer Security Library implements both SSL and TLS
Mozilla's Network Security Services (NSS) is dual-licensed under the MPL and the GPL
Quick introduction to SSL and Certificates
SSL Sequence Diagram
An Independent SSL Certificate Authority comparison
CAcert free certification authority
Online-Interface to check supported and preferred ciphers of HTTPS-Servers

References

David Wagner and Bruce Schneier, Analysis of the SSL 3.0 Protocol, The Second USENIX Workshop on Electronic Commerce Proceedings, USENIX Press, November 1996, pp29–40.

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.