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Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, as a novice, capable of setting up fine Drupal/Nginx/mail(Postfix) server I'm kind of shocked to get an F rating on ssllabs with the default, up to date, ssl enabled, Debian/Nginx config... Sounds like something to fix, not? Is there that much need for some forms of backwards compatibility? Are A+ servers badly reachable from older browsers or something? Why would the default be so bad? Somehow, in all my naivety I have always thought regular apt-get update/upgrades would keep me secure. Seems I'm still vulnerable to POODLE even. Guess I'll have to keep checking next to updating. Should I delete old config files with every update? Are new ones containing the recommended settings?

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Here's the how we get an A+ rating[1] for nginx on utilityapi.com:

    ssl on;
    ssl_certificate my_ssl.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key my_ssl.key;
    ssl_session_timeout 5m;
    ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
    ssl_ciphers EECDH+aRSA+AES256:EDH+aRSA+AES256:EECDH+aRSA+AES128:EDH+aRSA+AES128;
    ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:50m;
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
    add_header Strict-Transport-Security max-age=63072000;

Our configuration doesn't support for IE6 or IE8 on Windows XP, but that's the only downside. Also, this configuration has 100% forward secrecy :)

Finally, you can get an A+ rating for free with StartSSL's free option, then using the SHA2 intermediate certificate[2]. This is what I use for my pgp keyserver[3].

[1]: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=utilityapi.co...

[2]: https://www.startssl.com/certs/class1/sha2/pem/

[3]: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=sks.daylightp...

You can keep your A+ and add IE8 on XP, plus boost your key exchange to 100%[0], by following Mozilla's TLS docs[1] and sticking with the default Intermediate ciphersuite.

You might also consider disabling server tokens to hide your Nginx version (server_tokens off;) for a bit of 'security through obscurity' and enabling SPDY (listen 443 ssl spdy;) for a performance boost.

Also worth pointing out is the upcoming Let's Encrypt project[2] which will make domain validated certificates free soon.

[0]https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=brossmanit.co... [1]https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS [2]https://letsencrypt.org/

I think using Mozilla's "Modern cipher suite" list should do it, and it seems to be all forward secure:

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

What prevents me from using 'Modern' is it requires Android 4.4+, which excludes a hell of a lot of mobile users. I'm okay with dropping XP support but dropping Android 4.3 and earlier is too limiting for me.

I'm not wild about having non-FS options that a man in the middle could force a downgrade to. IE8 on XP isn't worth it.

The problem here is not "how to have a secure configuration", it's really "why is it not secure by default"; we actually need more "secure by default" because it largely reduces the chances of doing it wrong.

I have an up-to-date nginx on wheezy, stock debian packages, no more than just `listen $IP ssl ; ssl_certificate ; ssl_certificate_key` directives and it gets an A on ssllabs.

Do you know exactly what problem you had? It might have been unrelated to debian's presets.

EDIT: a different server with a many-times-upgraded nginx package (but same version) has no `ssl_protocols` in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf and so had SSLv3 enabled. So i agree that this can happen. In my case it's probably a consequence of silent upgrades and `Dpkg::Options::=--force-conf{def,new,old}` choosing to preserve existing config files.

These are the ones pulling down the grade: - This server is vulnerable to the POODLE attack. If possible, disable SSL 3 to mitigate. Grade capped to C. MORE INFO » - This server supports anonymous (insecure) suites (see below for details). Grade set to F. - The server supports only older protocols, but not the current best TLS 1.2. Grade capped to B. - This server accepts the RC4 cipher, which is weak. Grade capped to B. MORE INFO »

The server was installed quite some time ago on Digital Ocean, it could be that I just need the most recent default Nginx configs. I'll test. Btw, I have a startssl cert, should have choosen the www subdomain though, not "mail". I'll do an apt-get purge nginx before reinstalling and than manually add back the old settings.

You should have a configuration file ending in .dpkg-new with whatever settings the modern nginx package provides, no need to purge and reinstall.

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