Vulnerability in OpenSSL CVE-2016-2183

Because DES (and triple-DES) has only a 64-bit block size, birthday attacks are a real concern. For example, with the ability to run Javascript in a browser, it is possible to send enough traffic to cause a collision, and then use that information to recover something like a session Cookie. Triple-DES, which shows up as “DES-CBC3” in an OpenSSL cipher string, is still used on the Web, and major browsers are not yet willing to completely disable it. If you run a server, you should disable triple-DES. This is generally a configuration issue. If you run an old server that doesn’t support any better ciphers than DES or RC4, you should upgrade. For 1.0.2 and 1.0.1, we removed the triple-DES ciphers from the “HIGH” keyword and put them into “MEDIUM.” Note that we did not remove them from the “DEFAULT” keyword. For the 1.1.0 release, we treat triple-DES just like we are treating RC4. It is not compiled by default; you have to use “enable-weak-ssl-ciphers” as a config option. Even when those ciphers are compiled, triple-DES is only in the “MEDIUM” keyword. In addition we also removed it from the “DEFAULT” keyword.