Vulnerabilities in SSL Suites Weak Ciphers is a Medium risk vulnerability that is one of the most frequently found on networks around the world. This issue has been around since at least 1990 but has proven either difficult to detect, difficult to resolve or prone to being overlooked entirely.
Contents
Vital information on this issue
Scanning For and Finding Vulnerabilities in SSL Suites Weak Ciphers
Penetration Testing (Pentest) for this Vulnerability
Security updates on Vulnerabilities in SSL Suites Weak Ciphers
Confirming the Presence of Vulnerabilities in SSL Suites Weak Ciphers
False positive/negatives
Patching/Repairing this vulnerability
Vital Information on This Issue
Vulnerability Name:
SSL Suites Weak Ciphers
Test ID:
10652
Risk:
Medium
Category:
Encryption and Authentication
Type:
Attack
Summary:
The remote host supports the use of SSL ciphers that offer either weak encryption or no encryption at all.
Scanning For and Finding Vulnerabilities in SSL Suites Weak Ciphers
Use of Vulnerability Management tools, like Beyond Security’sbeSECURE(Automated Vulnerability Detection Software), are standard practice for the discovery of this vulnerability. The primary failure of VA in finding this vulnerability is related to setting the proper scope and frequency of network scans. It is vital that the broadest range of hosts (active IPs) possible are scanned and that scanning is done frequently. We recommend weekly.
Your existing scanning solution or set of test tools should make this not just possible, but easy and affordable. If that is not the case, please consider beSECURE.Learn moreorrequest a trial.
Penetration Testing (pentest) for this Vulnerability
The Vulnerabilities in SSL Suites Weak Ciphers is prone to false positive reports by most vulnerability assessment solutions. beSECURE is alone in using behavior based testing that eliminates this issue. For all other VA tools security consultants will recommend confirmation by direct observation. In any case Penetration testing procedures for discovery of Vulnerabilities in SSL Suites Weak Ciphers produces the highest discovery accuracy rate, but the infrequency of this expensive form of testing degrades its value. The ideal would be to have pentesting accuracy and the frequency and scope possibilities of VA solutions, and this is accomplished only by beSECURE.
Security Updates on Vulnerabilities in SSL Suites Weak Ciphers
Given that this is one of the most frequently found vulnerabilities, there is ample information regarding mitigation online and very good reason to get it fixed. Hackers are also aware that this is a frequently found vulnerability and so its discovery and repair is that much more important. It is so well known and common that any network that has it present and unmitigated indicates “low hanging fruit” to attackers.
Confirming the Presence of Vulnerabilities in SSL Suites Weak Ciphers
beSECURE is currently testing for and finding this vulnerability with zero false positives. If your current set of tools is indicating that it is present but you think it is probably a false positive
The secret killer of VA solution value is the false positive. There was an industry wide race to find the most vulnerabilities, including Vulnerabilities in SSL Suites Weak Ciphers ,and this resulted in benefit to poorly written tests that beef up scan reports by adding a high percentage of uncertainty. This may have sold a lot of systems some years ago, but it also stuck almost all VA solutions with deliberately inaccurate reporting that adds time to repairs that no administrator can afford. Beyond Security did not participate in this race to mutually assured destruction of the industry and to this day produces the most accurate and actionable reports available.
Patching/Repairing this Vulnerability
Vulnerabilities in SSL Suites Weak Ciphers is a Medium risk vulnerability that is also high frequency and high visibility. This is the most severe combination of security factors that exists and it is extremely important to find it on your network and fix it as soon as possible.
beSECURE can scan tens of thousands of IPs in large environments with segmented or distributed networks, and generate remediation tickets when vulnerabilities are found — and then track them within the system.
How to fix. To stop using weak cipher suites, you must configure your web server cipher suite list accordingly. Ideally, as a general guideline, you should remove any cipher suite containing references to NULL, anonymous, export, DES, 3DES, RC4, and MD5 algorithms.
In the Internet Options window on the Advanced tab, under Settings, scroll down to the Security section. In the Security section, locate the Use SSL and Use TLS options and uncheck Use SSL 3.0 and Use SSL 2.0. If they are not already selected, check Use TLS 1.0, Use TLS 1.1, and Use TLS 1.2.
The Disable-TlsCipherSuite cmdlet disables a cipher suite. This cmdlet removes the cipher suite from the list of Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol cipher suites for the computer.
One way to make a Caesar cipher a bit harder to break is to use different shifts at different positions in the message. For example, we could shift the first character by 25, the second by 14, the third by 17, and the fourth by 10.
You can use the sslyze option to test any SSL/TLS enabled service on any port. Weak ciphers and known cryptographic vulnerabilities such as the famous Heartbleed are all tested. As are other SSL/TLS attacks from recent years including BEAST, CRIME, BREACH, DROWN, FREAK and POODLE.
Finally, there is the option for a “NULL” cipher, which simply means, the traffic should not be encrypted – so this option should definitely not be enabled. In short, you should disable known deprecated and discouraged ciphers, including DES, IDEA, 3DES, RC2, RC4, IDEA, ARIA, SEED, and NULL ciphers.
In summary to disable ssl-static-key-ciphers, you will need to remove RSA from the httpd configuration. To disable ssl-static-key-ciphers, you will need to add ! RSA to the httpd configuration. You will now need to add the following code to the existing SSL cipher suites to remove ssl-static-key-ciphers.
Let's say, based from the list of supported TLS cipher suites, we would like to disable all the cipher suites that are weaker than TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA . In order to do this, we can call the Update Config API to set the property minTlsCipherSuite to TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA .
Introduction: My name is Tish Haag, I am a excited, delightful, curious, beautiful, agreeable, enchanting, fancy person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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