TLS 1.3 support?

[dolphin]

What is the status of Pale Moon TLS 1.3 support?

[jobbautista9]

What does the Security part of the Page Info of forum.palemoon.org say?

[dolphin]

The forum says 1.3 in the same pale moon browser and works fine.

The reason I ask is that an equipment manufacturer updated their certificate with a firmware update this week, and now trying to login to their equipment results in the following error in Pale Moon 64-bit:

Peer reports incompatible or unsupported protocol version
(Error code:SSL_ERROR_PROTOCOL_VERSION_ALERT)

What would cause Pale Moon to report this error?

Other browsers (firefox, chrome, edge) do not produce this error and allow login, but palemoon won't render the page further than that error. The equipment manufacturer's release note states that with this firmware only TLS 1.3 is supported, no longer previous versions which is why I wondered if there is anything complicated about TLS 1.3 support.

[Daikun]

The reason I ask is that an equipment manufacturer updated their certificate with a firmware update this week, and now trying to login to their equipment results in the following error in Pale Moon 64-bit:

And this website is...?
It would be nice to see an address so we can test it ourselves and try to find a solution.

[vannilla]

Pale Moon does not connect because this is a serious error that can compromise you and other users.
Other browsers since a while ago have started a policy of "connect at all costs", even if those costs pertain connection security et al. This obviously has the consequence of hiding important details that, like in this case, can impact users and expose them to malicious actors.
This is likely a misconfiguration on the part of the service operators, but I don't know the details so I can't really advise you in how to contact the operators to get them to fix it.

[jobbautista9]

You should've said that earlier then dolphin, as TLS 1.3 has been in the browser for a pretty long time now (first preliminary support in 27.4.0, first full support in 28.3.0).

Anyway, can you try if setting the about:config preference security.ssl.enable_tls13_compat_mode to true makes it work? If it does, great, but you should tell your manufacturer to update their TLS 1.3, as they're using an earlier draft of that version, which can be potentially insecure. See the release notes for 29.4.2 for details.

[jobbautista9]

And this website is...?
It would be nice to see an address so we can test it ourselves and try to find a solution.

I'm assuming they're referring to some router since they said equipment, but would be nice to know as well what brand it is.

[Moonchild]

If this concerns firmware on a non-public address then we're unlikely to be able to troubleshoot this easily.
Our TLS 1.3 implementation status is complete and to specification. If you are getting a protocol error then there is something wrong with the way the firmware handles TLS.

POSSIBLY they are implementing an obsolete draft of TLS 1.3 -- we've seen that happen in some middleware boxes.
To test that, set security.ssl.enable_tls13_compat_mode to true and see if that helps (a restart of the browser is required). If it fixes the issue then you should contact the equipment vendor and inform them they are using an insecure draft version of TLS 1.3 and should update their firmware to a proper implementation.

EDIT: Job beat me to the punch

[random]

Other browsers since a while ago have started a policy of "connect at all costs", even if those costs pertain connection security et al.

Do you have a link / source?

[vannilla]

Do you have a link / source?

OP says this:

Other browsers (firefox, chrome, edge) do not produce this error and allow login

As said elsewhere in this forum and on the web, TLS 1.3 draft as used here, which generates a blocking error that can't be bypassed in Pale Moon, is not as secure as TLS 1.3 final, so connecting to this less-than-secure environment no matter what exposes the users to various risks.

[Moonchild]

Do you have a link / source?

See the code comment at
https://xref.palemoon.org/goanna-central/source/platform/security/nss/lib/ssl/ssl.h#268

This was a change between TLS 1.3 draft 18 and draft 23 somewhere. Draft 18 is considerably less secure because of this, and therefore by default not supported in Pale Moon.

[dolphin]

Thanks very much for the replies and info.

Setting security.ssl.enable_tls13_compat_mode to true doesn't fix it, so I'll bring this up in a ticket to the cellular router manufacturer. (I don't have an easy way to provide access to the internal network IP of these cellular routers, so it should be easier for them to test with Pale Moon hopefully and solve the issue.)

[Moonchild]

Setting security.ssl.enable_tls13_compat_mode to true doesn't fix it

Oh? That is actually surprising - as far as I know that is the only current compatibility issue with TLS 1.3 on some sites that exists. So it's curious at least. Did you remember to restart the browser after changing the setting?

[dolphin]

Yes closed and relaunched browser, and for good measure went to File -> Restart after double-confirming it was set to true. Thanks.

I guess I should add that there has always been a cert-mismatch error that you have to accept (in any browser); if not using the devices with cloud management, which I prefer not to do, the default cert is to the manufacturer's subdomain, so you always have to accept the mismatch when accessing the device via private internal ip address, but this is different.

Will see if manufacturer has some thoughts on what is going on.

[franstam]

just curious to what a tcpdump says on tls handshake or a testssl.sh scan of the same website.