Apple Ending Safari Support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 in March 2020

Apple today announced on its WebKit blog that it is ending support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 starting in March 2020. TLS, or Transport Layer Security, is a security protocol used to protect web traffic.

Ahead of the planned deprecation, Apple recommends apps adopt TLS 1.2, which offers "security fit for the modern web." Upgrading from TLS 1.0 and 1.1 provides the following benefits, according to Apple:

- Modern cryptographic cipher suites and algorithms with desirable performance and security properties, e.g., perfect forward secrecy and authenticated encryption, that are not vulnerable to attacks such as BEAST.
- Removal of mandatory and insecure SHA-1 and MD5 hash functions as part of peer authentication.
- Resistance to downgrade-related attacks such as LogJam and FREAK.

TLS 1.2 is the standard on Apple platforms and already represents 99.6 percent of connections made from Safari. Apple says TLS 1.0 and 1.1 account for less than 0.36 percent of all connections.

Other browsers, including Firefox, Chrome, and Microsoft's Edge, are also planning to drop TLS 1.0 and 1.1 support starting in early 2020.

Top Rated Comments

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flyinmac

14 months ago

Good... there’s no reason to allow less secure communication protocols to continue functioning. It defeats the purpose of implementing stronger more secure protocols if we continue allow weaker entry points to function.

Rating: 6 Votes

eoblaed

14 months ago

Curious to know what would happen to the small amount of apps/pages that don't update to TLS 1.2? Will they just stop working?

Essentially.

Which is a good thing.

Rating: 4 Votes

vmistery

14 months ago

Honestly I’m surprised they are waiting until then. At work we went round and disable everything below 1.2 both client and server side last year once Windows Vista went out of support (the last Windows OS to not support 1.2).

Rating: 3 Votes

GenesisST

14 months ago

Guess I’ll be stuck using ancient versions of chrome/Firefox for a while longer. I get the reasons, but there are use cases in the enterprise realm where we need to connect to ancient internal systems. It’s not always easy upgrading a server due to various compatibility requirements.

The sad part is that if one brings it up to management, they would see 2020 as very far away and would never prioritize such an upgrade, even if it was easy.

Then when 2020 comes, big surprise and everyone starts running like chicken without their heads...

Rating: 2 Votes

coolfactor

14 months ago

Curious to know what would happen to the small amount of apps/pages that don't update to TLS 1.2? Will they just stop working?

Yes. The browser would deny the request because it can not negotiate a secure connection.

Rating: 2 Votes

thisisnotmyname

14 months ago

1.0 and 1.1 have been broken for a very long time. This should absolutely be the case.

Rating: 2 Votes

zakarhino

14 months ago

This should've been done this year or next year at the latest. 2020 is too far off.

Rating: 2 Votes

kemal

14 months ago

This is being dragged out too long. Please give us a way to ok connections to <1.2 servers.

Rating: 1 Votes

shareef777

14 months ago

If you ask me, insecure/broken crypto should never be used. Sorry if this is presumptuous, but I'm not aware of anyone who disagrees, so I'm surprised it took so long to kill TLS 1.1.
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I think Chrome still supported 1.0 until now. Same as safari.

Who uses Safari? People who want to save their battery and are aware that Chrome uses way more energy to run (at least 2X while in use and 5-10X idle). Other than that they're about the same, give or take features. Safari has Reader Mode; Chrome has cross-platform sync.
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Can you use plain HTTP for those? I can imagine services that _only_ have an HTTPS endpoint with TLS ≤1.1, in which case they're screwed.
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When HTTPS was new, most sites let you choose whether to use it or plain HTTP. Google did this for a while. Maybe those old ones will still let you choose.

No, many systems are HTTPS only. On a Windows VDI that I use, I've got SeaMonkey running to get me into some systems that are so old that I can't find an older version of Chrome to work with it.

Rating: 1 Votes

eoblaed

14 months ago

broken or just insecure? I thought 1.0 has been considered insecure for a long time. PCI compliance was updated earlier this year to require TLS 1.2.

Given that the reason for TLS to exist is to securely encrypt data, and that 1.0 and 1.1 don't do that, I think that could be considered broken.

Rating: 1 Votes

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