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security.tls.version.min - is this for SSL ot TLS?

ben155
ben155
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Hi, I have been using Thunderbird to set up an SMTP email account. I have it working now, but one of the steps I took to get it to work was to edit the Thunderbird configuration. I changed security.tls.version.min from 3 to 1. I have changed it back to 3 now and my email account is continuing to work. TO me this suggests that security.tls.version.min is setting another variable somewhere that is not listed in the config. I am also confused why TLS would have a min version value of 3 by default. The latest version of TLS is 1.3 (at time of writing this). Is the tls.version.min also being used for SSL - which does in fact have a version 3.0? I just thought I should bring this to your attention because there seems to be a lot of talk in other forums about changing the tls.version.min to 1 to fix issues, and that doesn't work for all other issues and reducing the min version can create new issues - especially if my suspicion is correct, that it is also being used for SSL - ie security certificates. If this is the case, as a feature update, should SSL and TLS be given their own version config parameters in Thunderbird? Cheers, Ben

Hi, I have been using Thunderbird to set up an SMTP email account. I have it working now, but one of the steps I took to get it to work was to edit the Thunderbird configuration. I changed security.tls.version.min from 3 to 1. I have changed it back to 3 now and my email account is continuing to work. TO me this suggests that security.tls.version.min is setting another variable somewhere that is not listed in the config. I am also confused why TLS would have a min version value of 3 by default. The latest version of TLS is 1.3 (at time of writing this). Is the tls.version.min also being used for SSL - which does in fact have a version 3.0? I just thought I should bring this to your attention because there seems to be a lot of talk in other forums about changing the tls.version.min to 1 to fix issues, and that doesn't work for all other issues and reducing the min version can create new issues - especially if my suspicion is correct, that it is also being used for SSL - ie security certificates. If this is the case, as a feature update, should SSL and TLS be given their own version config parameters in Thunderbird? Cheers, Ben

All Replies (1)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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SSL and TLS both refer to secure connection protocols. TLS has superseded SSL as a technical matter, but SSL is still used colloquially.

The preference values correspond to:

  • 1 => TLS 1.0
  • 2 => TLS 1.1
  • 3 => TLS 1.2 [default "min" because older versions are deemed insecure]
  • 4 => TLS 1.3 [default "max"]

A few years ago, 0 indicated SSL 3.0, but Thunderbird no longer supports SSL 3.0.