Posts Tagged: TLS 1.1

Proposal to drop TLS 1.2 support in early 2025

Filed Under: Tech Insight by midas — Comments Off on Proposal to drop TLS 1.2 support in early 2025
February 5, 2024
Proposal to deprecate Transport Layer Security TLS 1.2

Transport Layer Security – or “TLS”- is a cryptographic mechanism to facilitate secure connections and communications across the internet. For example, the https network connection between your device and secure websites or applications, like MIDAS.

Several incarnations of the Transport Layer Security protocol have been developed over the years, the most recent being 1.3:

ProtocolReleasedCurrent Status
TLS 1.01999Deprecated
TLS 1.12006Deprecated
TLS 1.22008In use since 2008
TLS 1.32018In use since 2018
TLS Protocol History

TLS 1.0 and 1.1 are now considered “legacy protocols” and “weak” by today’s cryptographic standards. That’s because they’re susceptible to several vulnerabilities. Modern web browsers automatically default to preferring more secure TLS 1.2 and 1.3 connections. In fact, they may even display a warning when connecting to a website that only supports the now obsolete TLS 1.0/1.1 protocols.

As security and cryptographic standards have evolved over the years, we have too! We’ve previously dropped support for TLS 1.0 connections to our network in 2017. We then subsequently dropped support for TLS 1.1 connections in 2020.

As part of our ongoing commitment to security, we’re now proposing to also deprecate support for TLS 1.2 connections to our client servers in early 2025. Going forward, we propose to only support TLS 1.3 (the latest Transport Layer Security protocol version) connections.

But wait.. isn’t TLS 2.0 still considered secure?

In the past few years, researchers have discovered cryptographic weakness in the ciphers and algorithms that TLS 1.2 uses.

While TLS 1.2 can still be used, it is no longer considered the most secure option. TLS 1.2 is only considered “safe” when weak ciphers and algorithms are removed.

On the other hand, TLS 1.3 supports the latest modern encryption with stronger encryption algorithms and more robust authentication mechanisms. TLS 1.3 is currently the most secure TLS version. At time of writing, TLS 1.3 currently has no known vulnerabilities, and also offers performance improvements over TLS 1.2.

What impact would disabling TLS 2.0 support have?

Most modern browsers and operating systems support TLS 1.3.

Therefore, the vast majority of users will be unaffected by our proposal to switch off support for TLS 1.2 in early 2025. However, if you’re using an older device or operating system, you may need to take action.

Here’s a list of browsers and devices that will be affected when TLS 1.2 connections are blocked:

  • Internet Explorer: All versions of Internet Explorer do not support TLS 1.3. This should not impact any of our users, as our MIDAS software has not been supported in IE since 2019.
  • Edge Legacy: Versions of Edge Legacy prior to April 2018 do not support TLS 1.3. Users would need to update to a newer version of Edge or a different browser.
  • Safari on macOS 10.12 Sierra or earlier: These older macOS versions do not support TLS 1.3 in Safari. Users would need to upgrade their macOS or use a different browser.
  • Very old versions of other browsers: Browsers that haven’t been updated in several years might not support TLS 1.3.
  • Older Android devices: Devices running Android 9 (and earlier versions) do not support TLS 1.3.
  • Older iOS devices: Devices running iOS 12 (and earlier versions) do not support TLS 1.3.

Web browsers and devices that do support TLS 1.3:

  • Microsoft Edge (current versions): Supported since April 2018 (Edge 79+)
  • Google Chrome: Supported since April 2018 (Chrome 70+)
  • Mozilla Firefox: Supported since October 2017 (Firefox 63+)
  • Apple Safari (on macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later): Supported since September 2018 (Safari 14+)
  • Opera: Supported since April 2018 (Opera 57+)
  • Android: Android 10 (or later)
  • iOS: iOS 13 (or later)

Important Information For Hosted API users:

If you’re a cloud-hosted MIDAS customer utilizing the optional MIDAS API you may need to take action before TLS 1.2 connections to our network are disabled in early 2025.

You’ll need to ensure that your applications and the underlying programming language you develop in can support (and are correctly configured for) TLS 1.2 connections.

For instance Java 7 (1.7) (and lower) and .NET 4.7 (and lower) languages don’t support TLS 1.1/1.2.

If your applications/programming languages do not support TLS 1.3 encryption, your MIDAS API calls will begin to fail in early 2025 once we disable TLS 1.2 support across our network.

Please refer to the vendor of your programming language if you’re unsure whether it supports TLS 1.3, or for assistance enabling such support in your development environment.

Remind me again.. when is this all happening?

Currently, we are proposing to drop support for TLS 1.2 connections to our network in early 2025.

We have not fixed a specific date in 2025 for this as yet (as we want to hear from you – see below).

However, anything can change over the course of a year. Should new vulnerabilities be discovered in TLS 1.2 during 2024, this may prompt us to bring our plans to deprecate 1.2 support forward.

We Want To Hear From You!

We are currently only proposing to deprecate TLS 1.2 connections to our network in early 2025.

However, we’re open to feedback from you our users in the meantime.

If you feel you have a particular usage case that would require continued reliance on TLS 1.2 support, please reach out to us to discuss.

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Security Enhancements in v4.25

Filed Under: Development by midas — Leave a comment
June 16, 2020

Security is our number one priority here at MIDAS. We constantly strive to ensure our software remains secure, and provide users with a range of tools to help keep their MIDAS accounts and data secure.

We’re further enhancing security in MIDAS v4.25 and introducing a new admin setting.

New & Unfamiliar Login Notifications

A new “Alert users upon logins from unfamiliar devices” setting is located under MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Security.

With this setting enabled, a user account logged into from an unfamiliar browser/device, will trigger an automated email notification to the account holder.

Email Notification alerting user to an unfamiliar login to their account
Email Notification alerting user to an unfamiliar login to their account

This email notification is customizable through a template via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Templates. The default notification provides details of the browser, operating system, and IP address of the new login. It advises that the notification can be safely ignored if the new login was genuine, or what to do if the user doesn’t recognize the login.

Obviously for these email notifications to be sent, your MIDAS system must be correctly configured for sending email.

Other “Under The Hood” Security Enhancements

You’ll often see “Security Enhancement” in the changelog for our MIDAS software. This is nothing to worry about, and it’s part of our pro-active approach to security.

We routinely make small changes to improve and “harden” our software against a variety of threats.

One of the security enhancements we’ve made in v4.25 is to drop usage of the “Math::Random::Secure” Perl module. Perl – the language that we develop our software in – is capable of natively generating random numbers. MIDAS uses random numbers for a variety of things, including password generation and unique session tokens. However, random numbers natively generated by Perl are not “cryptographically secure”. As such, we’ve been utilizing the “Math::Random::Secure” module to ensure that random numbers generated by MIDAS were cryptographically secure.

The developers of “Math::Random::Secure” haven’t updated it in over three years. Whilst the module still functions, it depends upon another module (Crypt::Random::Secure), which itself depends upon another module (Any::Moose) which has since been deprecated.

So for this reason, and also for performance reasons, MIDAS v4.25 now defaults to using Crypt::PRNG instead. If this Perl module isn’t available on your server, MIDAS will simply revert back to Perl’s native random number generator. However, it’s really easy to install Perl modules, and so for enhanced security we’d recommend installing Crypt::PRNG.

Dropping TLS 1.1 support for cloud-hosted customers

TLS stands for “Transport Layer Security” and is a mechanism used to facilitate secure connections and communications over the internet. To date, there have been three versions of TLS, each more secure than the last. The latest version of TLS is 1.3. The original TLS 1.0 version is considered “weak”, and no longer supported by modern browsers. We previously dropped support for TLS 1.0 on our servers back in July 2017.

To coincide with the release of MIDAS v4.25, we’ll be dropping support for TLS 1.1 connections to our client servers. Our client servers will continue to support both TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3 secure connections.

Dropping TLS 1.1 support should have no noticeable impact for regular users of MIDAS. We’ve already dropped TLS 1.1 support on our website. If you’re reading this post, then you’ll still be able to access your hosted MIDAS system once TLS 1.1 support is dropped.

However, if you’re a cloud-hosted MIDAS customer utilizing the optional MIDAS API then you may need to take action. Please ensure that your applications and the underlying programming language you develop in can support (and are correctly configured for) TLS 1.2/1.3 connections.

If your applications/programming languages do not support at least TLS 1.2, your MIDAS API calls will begin to fail once we disable TLS 1.1 support.

Please refer to the vendor of your programming language if you’re unsure whether it supports TLS 1.2/1.3, or for assistance enabling such support in your development environment. This doesn’t affect API users interfacing with a self hosted MIDAS system.

These are just a few of the new and improved features for MIDAS v4.25. Please see this post for details of other new features you’ll find in v4.25.

Reddit You can also ask questions and discuss the new features of v4.25 over on Reddit.

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