jmhodges/howsmyssl — pull request #17 by briansmith (2014-01-10 10:42:06+00:00)
Title: SSL_RSA_FIPS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA is not insecure

SSL_RSA_FIPS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA is exactly like SSL_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA except for one difference when the handshake negotiates SSL 3.0: SSL_RSA_FIPS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA will use the more secure TLS PRF, whereas SSL_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA will use the less secure SSL 3.0 PRF. Consequently, at least in theory, SSL_RSA_FIPS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA is more secure than SSL_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA. Since SSL_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA is considered "Probably okay" and SSL_RSA_FIPS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA is more secure than that one, SSL_RSA_FIPS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA should be considered "Probably okay" too.

In practice, no servers negotiate this cipher suite, and the browser that offers it (Firefox 26 and earlier) does not do TLS False Start, so it really doesn't matter in terms of security whether the browser supports the cipher suite or not.

Soon this will be a non-issue because Firefox 27 will stop offering the SSL_RSA_FIPS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA cipher suite in its ClientHello.