TLS has its roots in SSL. SSL was introduced by Netscape Communications in 1994 to build a secured channel between the Netscape browser and the web server it connects to. This was an important need at that time, just prior to the dot-com bubble. The SSL 1.0 specification was never released to the public, because it was heavily criticized for the weak crypto algorithms that were used. In November 1994, Netscape released the SSL 2.0 specification with many improvements. Most of its design was done by Kipp Hickman, with much less participation from the public community. Even though it had its own vulnerabilities, it earned the trust and respect of the public as a strong protocol. The very first deployment of SSL 2.0 was in Netscape Navigator 1.1.
In January 1996, Ian Goldberg and David Wagner discovered a vulnerability in the random-number-generation logic in SSL 2.0. Mostly due to US export regulations, Netscape had to weaken its encryption scheme to use 40-bit long keys. This limited all possible key combinations to a million million, which were tried by a set of researchers in 30 hours with many spare CPU cycles; they were able to recover the encrypted data.
Because SSL 2.0 was completely under the control of Netscape, Microsoft responded to its weaknesses by developing its own variant of SSL in 1995, called Private Communication Technology (PCT). PCT fixed many security vulnerabilities uncovered in SSL 2.0 and simplified SSL handshaking with fewer round trips required to establish a connection.
SSL 3.0 was released in 1996 by Netscape, and Paul Kocher was a key architect. In fact, Netscape hired Paul Kocher to work with its own Phil Karlton and Allan Freier to build SSL 3.0 from scratch. SSL 3.0 introduced a new specification language as well as a new record type and new data encoding, which made it incompatible with SSL 2.0. It fixed issues in its predecessor, introduced due to MD5 hashing. The new version used a combination of the MD5 and SHA-1 algorithms to build a hybrid hash. SSL 3.0 was the most stable of all. In 1996, Microsoft came up with a new proposal to merge SSL 3.0 and its own SSL variant PCT 2.0 to build a new standard called Secure Transport Layer Protocol (STLP).
Due to the interest shown by different vendors in solving the same problem in different ways, in 1996 the IETF initiated the TLS working group to standardize all vendor-specific implementations. All the major vendors, including Netscape and Microsoft, met under the chairmanship of Bruce Schneier in a series of IETF meetings to decide the future of TLS. TLS 1.0 (RFC 2246) was the result; it was released by the IETF in January 1999. The differences between TLS 1.0 and SSL 3.0 aren’t dramatic, but they’re significant enough that TLS 1.0 and SSL 3.0 don’t interoperate. TLS 1.0 was quite stable and stayed unchanged for seven years, until 2006. In April 2006, RFC 4346 introduced TLS 1.1, which made few major changes to 1.0. Two years later, RFC 5246 introduced TLS 1.2, which is the latest at the time of this writing.
In January 1996, Ian Goldberg and David Wagner discovered a vulnerability in the random-number-generation logic in SSL 2.0. Mostly due to US export regulations, Netscape had to weaken its encryption scheme to use 40-bit long keys. This limited all possible key combinations to a million million, which were tried by a set of researchers in 30 hours with many spare CPU cycles; they were able to recover the encrypted data.
Because SSL 2.0 was completely under the control of Netscape, Microsoft responded to its weaknesses by developing its own variant of SSL in 1995, called Private Communication Technology (PCT). PCT fixed many security vulnerabilities uncovered in SSL 2.0 and simplified SSL handshaking with fewer round trips required to establish a connection.
SSL 3.0 was released in 1996 by Netscape, and Paul Kocher was a key architect. In fact, Netscape hired Paul Kocher to work with its own Phil Karlton and Allan Freier to build SSL 3.0 from scratch. SSL 3.0 introduced a new specification language as well as a new record type and new data encoding, which made it incompatible with SSL 2.0. It fixed issues in its predecessor, introduced due to MD5 hashing. The new version used a combination of the MD5 and SHA-1 algorithms to build a hybrid hash. SSL 3.0 was the most stable of all. In 1996, Microsoft came up with a new proposal to merge SSL 3.0 and its own SSL variant PCT 2.0 to build a new standard called Secure Transport Layer Protocol (STLP).
Due to the interest shown by different vendors in solving the same problem in different ways, in 1996 the IETF initiated the TLS working group to standardize all vendor-specific implementations. All the major vendors, including Netscape and Microsoft, met under the chairmanship of Bruce Schneier in a series of IETF meetings to decide the future of TLS. TLS 1.0 (RFC 2246) was the result; it was released by the IETF in January 1999. The differences between TLS 1.0 and SSL 3.0 aren’t dramatic, but they’re significant enough that TLS 1.0 and SSL 3.0 don’t interoperate. TLS 1.0 was quite stable and stayed unchanged for seven years, until 2006. In April 2006, RFC 4346 introduced TLS 1.1, which made few major changes to 1.0. Two years later, RFC 5246 introduced TLS 1.2, which is the latest at the time of this writing.