Back to Home11/14/2025, 10:15:04 PM

SSL Configuration Generator

smartmic

263 points

79 comments

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supportive

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positive

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Very active discussion

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Day 1

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Comment distribution61 data points

Based on 61 loaded comments

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01Story posted
11/14/2025, 10:15:04 PM
4d ago
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02First comment
11/15/2025, 12:51:51 AM
3h after posting
Step 02
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61 comments in Day 1
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04Latest activity
11/15/2025, 5:01:00 PM
3d ago
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Discussion (79 comments)

Showing 61 comments of 79

accrual

4d ago

13 replies

Why are we still using the term "SSL" anywhere? It feels immediately like someone forgot the last 10 years of tech.

jof

4d ago

1 reply

SSL was developed by Netscape in the 90s and evolved into TLS. Netscape Navigator essentially evolved into Mozilla.

"They've" been at it from the beginning, so it somehow seems understandable that Mozilla has a lot of "SSL" momentum or carryover.

zobzu

4d ago

actually we wrote this many years ago and left mozilla ans nobody is really updating it other than adding new configs. its not super useful anymore :)

at the time it made sense to us because you couldnt have good SSL configuration everywhere (it was not well supported) so we had trade-offs and created tiers of configs. We barely had TLS coming out, so SSL eas still the name of the game.

nowaday just use the latest TLS defaults and you're golden.

tempest_

4d ago

1 reply

The main answer is a lot of the software on that page predates SSLs deprecation and people (sysadmins especially, because they wrote some bash script 20 years ago and want it to keep working) like backwards compatibility.

ranger_danger

4d ago

1 reply

I think the bigger answer is certificate vendors won't stop using the term.

tempest_

4d ago

1 reply

Maybe, but who is actually still buying tls certs from a vendor?

ranger_danger

4d ago

2 replies

Lots of people, I certainly don't trust free providers, and I think it's a lot less likely that malware will use a non-free cert, so some people trust those more. Plus there are email, code-signing and other cert types that aren't provided for free.

ekr____

4d ago

1 reply

What does it mean not to trust Let's Encrypt in this case? What is it you are concerned they will do?

ranger_danger

4d ago

3 replies

I worry that the CA is somehow compromised (state actor holding private keys, etc).

alwillis

4d ago

1 reply

BTW, all the recent certificate shenanigans have invovled for-profit CAs [1].

[1]: https://sslmate.com/resources/certificate_authority_failures

ranger_danger

3d ago

2 replies

I still believe in "if it's free, you are the product."

alwillis

3d ago

In what way is a non-profit such as Lets Encrypt attempting to monetize their customer relationships? They've issued more 700 million certificates at no cost.

While I don't get the cynicism in this case, you would agree supporting a secure web is in the public interest, right?

IgorPartola

3d ago

To each their own, but you do realize that you are using a free website running on free software secured by free TLS libraries transmitted via routers that often run free software and firmware? Also how much did you pay for the browser you used to make these comments?

There is a sea of difference between something like Google/Facebook/TikTok and Let’s Encrypt/the Linux Foundation/FSF/etc. I can only assume you can’t see that difference if you have spent no time reading about these things, but I would encourage you to. This stuff is important especially if you get to make security decisions for any kind of product.

nixosbestos

4d ago

I would have that concern, at minimum 100x more with random shitty unreliable SSL providers, than those being run by literal huge nerds and non-profits. Your analysis here is thin and lazy and that's being generous to your analysis.

alwillis

4d ago

> I worry that the CA is somehow compromised (state actor holding private keys, etc).

"Somehow" is doing a lot work in that sentence.

Operationally, there's no difference between the security procedures and requirements that a for-profit or a non-profit CA must adhere to.

oarsinsync

4d ago

> I certainly don't trust free providers

What does this mean in practice? Do you remove the free providers from your OS & browser trust stores? Does this mean you get warnings every time you visit a site that uses LetsEncrypt (and other free providers)?

trenchpilgrim

4d ago

1 reply

TLS is basically SSL 4. They only changed the name to signal the backwards incompatibility.

ekr____

4d ago

Not quite.

The name was changed from SSL to TLS as part of the adoption in IETF. I imagine different people had different motivations, but in part it was a signal that it was going to be controlled by IETF rather than Netscape.

As far as compatibility goes, TLS is backward compatible with SSLv3 [0] in that the client can send a ClientHello that is acceptable to both SSLv3 and TLS servers and the server can select the version to use.

Re: the version number, we're now on TLS 1.3, so I guess that would be SSLv7.

[0] The situation is more complicated with SSLv2, which had a different ClientHello format.

gerdesj

4d ago

1 reply

You might as well decry "Hoover" for a vacuum cleaner. I haven't seen a Hoover for way longer than SSL -> TLS. OK I have but I blanked it!

bombcar

4d ago

2 replies

I’m going to xerox this Kleenex.

I think xerox still exits but darn if I haven’t seen one in ages.

IgorPartola

3d ago

I did this recently then put it in my Tupperware (which most people have never seen or used since it was only sold at those at home Tupperware parties and not at stores).

waste_monk

4d ago

The printers still exist, but the branding is deprecated.

Xerox -> Fuji-Xerox -> FUJIFILM Business Innovation

BobbyTables2

4d ago

1 reply

Because “OpenSSL” was too lazy to rename themselves to “OpenTLS”

weddpros

3d ago

That's good! I'll use TLS when OpenSSL gets renamed :-D (I own many SSL domains and projects)

wiether

4d ago

1 reply

I'm one of the few using "TLS", but it's hard.

When doing this, you see that some people feel that you are being pedantic.

And the biggest issue is that it creates confusion. During calls with customers, when I tell that we're going to setup their TLS certs, they reply, worried: "no, we need SSL certs!".

I see it as another chicken & egg situation: regular people don't know about TLS, and business are afraid of communicating about TLS because they don't want their customer going elsewhere because they don't understand what TLS is and want SSL

I went on Cloudflare to try and illustrate this, and it's... complicated https://www.cloudflare.com/application-services/products/ssl...

The path says SSL but most of the page it about TLS, unless sometimes it's SSL...

weddpros

3d ago

There are no TLS certs, it's x509 certs :) SSL certificate is still the name used by everybody though. For the protocol, TLS is correct (apart from SSLv3 which is very deprecated).

homebrewer

3d ago

1 reply

TLS is a Microsoftie term. I use SSL out of stubbornness.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44282378

immibis

3d ago

It's also the official name in the RFC. TLS 1.0 may be the same as SSL 3.0, but TLS 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 are just TLS 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3.

foofoo12

4d ago

Back in the day, SSL didn't exists. When it came into existence, it was quite an expensive novelty.

It became a generic name that everyone knew for encrypted HTTP connections. It still is a generic name for that, even though the underlying protocol changed name to TLS.

m_sahaf

3d ago

ElGamal says he uses them interchangeably. He says TLS exists for historical reasons, but the essence of the technology is the same. I got into the habit of using SSL/TLS.

meepmorp

4d ago

I tend to expand TLS thread-local storage, so SSL is less confusing for me.

nurettin

3d ago

SSL is not going away, might as well forget TLS instead.

https://www.fortinet.com/resources/cyberglossary/ssl-vpn

kittikitti

4d ago

I had to double check my nginx configuration and the variables use SSL in the names even though I define the protocol to be TLS. I have the certbot commands and their naming conventions use SSL. Perhaps you've never actually implemented SSL or TLS and just use the latest tech jargon to fake understanding?

voidfunc

4d ago

Good luck renaming OpenSSL...

Bender

4d ago

2 replies

In a similar spirit there is also a site to scan security headers of any site [1] and another to verify the TLS settings from the Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator [2] and a git repo with code to scan sites from the command line [3] useful if the site is not reachable on the internet or automated scans to HTML reports.

[1] - https://securityheaders.com/

[2] - https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

[3] - https://github.com/testssl/testssl.sh

bawolff

4d ago

2 replies

Honestly, i disagree with the security headers one. Various security headers do different things and should not be applied blindly. While some are always appropriate there are also some that make sense to skip depending on what specificly your site is doing.

Not to mention, when i looked at the hall of fame entries, most had a CSP header, but it was a useless CSP header that was meaningless. It doesn't seem to distinguish between having the header and actually using it correctly.

Calamityjanitor

4d ago

1 reply

This was always my pet peeve when working as a penetration tester. We'd run simple tools like this to cover the basics, but so many coworkers would blindly copy paste the issues without considering the site's context and suitability. Not to knock their skills, they'd find real vulnerabilities too. It's just that this stuff was considered beneath them, while I felt that giving a client tailored advice on little details like this is what they were looking for and shows attention to detail.

poink

4d ago

As a security conscious dev that has worked in various highly regulated spaces I want to say we really appreciate people like you, because they’re super rare

kro

4d ago

It's seriously infuriating receiving these "Critical vulnerability reports" customers let other agencies do, and having to justify why you have no Referer-Policy header.

Nice to read that you are reasonable.

Also, they want a strict CSP while serving 10 different ad networks :)

BoppreH

3d ago

I needed to perform scans internally, and testssl.sh was too slow (minimum 20 seconds with parallelization and all optional scans disabled). So I made my own scanner, for a 60-100x speedup: https://github.com/boppreh/hello_tls . It doesn't do vulnerability assessment, but I was more interested in extracting the configuration.

QuantumNomad_

4d ago

2 replies

I don’t see any option in this config generator for mTLS (mutual TLS, where you use client certificates in addition to server certificates).

Perhaps it is too niche of a thing. Sadly. It really is quite useful in some situations.

bbarnett

4d ago

Well, IMO you need a higher degree of knowledge to deal with client certs. Often you setup your own CA too. Definitely niche.

gerdesj

4d ago

It's a web server base config configurator relating to initial comms. Authentication mechanisms are way out of scope for this.

zdc1

4d ago

1 reply

Their "AWS ELB" seems to be a Classic Load Balancer; probably not the best term to use. The "AWS ALB" is an Application Load Balancer, of course.

captn3m0

3d ago

I think this existed before the ALB was announced, and doesn’t see that many updates.

ajsnigrutin

4d ago

1 reply

How do these configs differ to server defaults? If some really bad settings are enabled by default (thus needing this custom config), shouldn't it be better just to have the server-software devs fix the defaults to be 'good enough' (for most)?

mholt

4d ago

Great question. Servers should ship with secure defaults.

mxey

4d ago

1 reply

Proper configuration of cryptography should not be abdicated to application developers or operators: https://go.dev/blog/tls-cipher-suites

> The Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator is great, and it should not exist.

Avamander

3d ago

Not only is it difficult to make an informed choice, it also incurs a maintenance cost. Cost which is often not paid, resulting in configuration that becomes increasingly sub-optimal as time passes and the SSL/TLS library is updated.

I'm fairly certain that when that generator was made (or article written), OpenSSL and similar already had ciphersuite presets one could use. So it is a bit odd that the generator is not enhancing those.

As an example, in the case of OpenSSL you can combine presets such as "HIGH" with your additional preferences. Such as avoiding non-PFS key exchanges, DoS risks, SHA1 phase out or less frequently used block ciphers. Result being something like "HIGH:!kRSA:!kEDH:!SHA1:!CAMELLIA:!ARIA". Optionally one can also bump up global "SECLEVEL" in OpenSSL's configuration.

Such a combination helps avoid issues like accidentally crippling operations when an ECC key(/cert) is used and someone forgot to allow ECDHE+ECDSA in addition to ECDHE+RSA. Nor does it accidentally disable strong ciphersuites using ChaCha20 that aren't as old.

Same goes for key exchange configuration. Quite a few servers don't have EdDSA available that don't run Windows, I suspect it's because they were set at some point and forgotten. Now such configuration also disables post-quantum hybrid key exchange algorithms.

egberts1

3d ago

1 reply

it is amazing that Chrome 80 still hasn’t upgrade its OpenSSL to v1.1.1.

danielhlockard

3d ago

Is there some specific reason to use Chrome v80?

yread

3d ago

1 reply

Why are they recommending SSLHonorCipherOrder Off ?

homebrewer

3d ago

1 reply

Same reason they recommend the similar directive for nginx:

> all the ciphers in Modern and Intermediate are secure. As such, we let the client choose the most performant cipher suite for their hardware configuration.

https://github.com/mozilla/server-side-tls/issues/260#issuec...

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS

Avamander

3d ago

There's no need for that.

The choice between ChaCha20 and AES can be left to the clients with the "PrioritizeChaCha" option. On both OpenSSL and BoringSSL, likely similar options are available with other libraries as well. Anything else such as not enforcing any preference is unnecessary.

jms703

4d ago

This has been around for a long time. Kudos to the folks that built it. It served a need at the time and made a big impact on improving configurations for people that didn't understand the myriad of ways to setup ssl/tls.

quesera

4d ago

This looks like something that's been around forever, but it's the first time I've seen it. xkcd://{{derive_from_context}}

It's a great idea. I've created (or copied) at least half of these output formats, a few of which I remember being annoyingly difficult to surface from the project docs.

But in the moment today, it's mostly interesting to see the different ways of saying the same things in various configuration languages. And thinking that this might be why so many people with different brains find the technology world so obtuse and off-putting.

The joke's on them, of course. We like it this way! (Never wrestle with a pig...)

eqvinox

3d ago

It's sad-funny that they include OCSP stapling when ~browsers~^W Let's Encrypt have decided to eradicate OCSP (including stapled OCSP) :(.

blfr

4d ago

They also have configs for ssh, although without the cool generator.

https://infosec.mozilla.org/guidelines/openssh

kitd

4d ago

A similar too for OpenSSL config would be great

benatkin

4d ago

Thanks Mozilla, I don't know what I would do if I couldn't generate a config for Apache 420 with OpenSSL 69.

anonymous344

4d ago

why the site's back button doesn't work?

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