Internet Engineering Task Force Releases the Final Version of TLS 1.3; Newest Chrome and Firefox Versions Already Support a Draft Version of It (cnet.com)

The encryption that protects your browser's connection to websites is getting a notch faster and a notch safer to use. From a report: That's because the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) on Friday finished a years-long process of modernizing the technology used to secure website communications. You may never have heard of Transport Layer Security -- TLS for short -- but version 1.3 is now complete and headed to websites, browsers and other parts of the internet that rely on its security. "Publishing TLS 1.3 is a huge accomplishment. It is one the best recent examples of how it is possible to take 20 years of deployed legacy code and change it on the fly, resulting in a better internet for everyone," said Nick Sullivan, head of cryptography for Cloudflare, which helps customers distribute their websites and other content around the world, in a blog post.

TLS 1.3 brings some significant improvements over TLS 1.2, which was finished 10 years ago. Perhaps first on the list is that it'll mean websites load faster. Setting up an encrypted connection on the web historically has caused delays since your browser and the website server must send information back and forth in a process called a handshake. The slower your broadband or the more congested your mobile network is, the more you'll notice these delays. Firefox and Chrome already support a draft version of TLS 1.3.

Comments

Pretty fly

[jargonburn]

From Wikipedia:

TLS 1.3 was added to Firefox 52.0, which was released in March 2017

TLS 1.3 was defined in RFC 8446 in August 2018.

And the summary:

it is possible to take 20 years of deployed legacy code and change it on the fly

First, I disagree with "on the fly" in this context.

Second, *shudder*