Safer Internet encryption via TLS may take years, expert says

Although the TLS (Transport Layer Security) 1.2 protocol, designed to make network connections more secure, was defined in 2008, a security expert at Black Hat Europe this week in Amsterdam said it will be years before Web users can reap its benefits.

TLS was developed in 1999 as an improvement on SSL (Secure Socket Layer) data encryption. Though SSL 3.0 is still used, TLS version 1.0 is supported by most commonly used browsers. However, it was proven vulnerable in 2001 when security researchers demonstrated a working exploit, code named BEAST (Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS). Read more...