Vulnerabilities in TLS Communications

Vulnerabilities in TLS Communications

Product Serial: B-2022-05-16a

TLP: WHITE

Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 and 1.1 have been strongly recommended for deprecation in order to adhere to new industry standards, mitigate risks of cyberattacks, and minimize the risk of misconfigurations.

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Scope Note

ZeroFox Intelligence is derived from a variety of sources, including—but not limited to—curated open-source accesses, vetted social media, proprietary data sources, and direct access to threat actors and groups through covert communication channels. Information relied upon to complete any report cannot always be independently verified. As such, ZeroFox applies rigorous analytic standards and tradecraft in accordance with best practices and includes caveat language and source citations to clearly identify the veracity of our Intelligence reporting and substantiate our assessments and recommendations. All sources used in this particular Intelligence product were identified prior to 12:00 PM (EDT) on May 16, 2022; per cyber hygiene best practices, caution is advised when clicking on any third-party links.

Executive Summary

Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 and 1.1 have been strongly recommended for deprecation in order to adhere to new industry standards, mitigate risks of cyberattacks, and minimize the risk of misconfigurations. Recent developments, dubbed “TLStorm 2.0,” involved several critical vulnerabilities in TLS communications in multiple models of network switches, emphasizing the urgency of updating from outdated TLS versions to more secure versions. Most notably, these vulnerabilities include the possibility of hackers intercepting and decrypting traffic between a user's browser and an SSL-secured website.