Why Android SSL was downgraded from AES256-SHA to RC4-MD5 in late 2010

Re:Why Android SSL was downgraded from AES256-SHA to RC4-MD5... by evmar on Monday October 14, 2013 @02:42PM (#6548860)

I asked my local SSL expert, and he mentioned: the list the client sends is just a preference list; the server can choose what it wants.

For example, nginx by default[1] specifies an OpenSSL cipher list of HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5, which you can examine by running

$ openssl ciphers 'HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5'

You'll see neither RC4 nor MD5 in that list. (You will if you run a plain "openssl ciphers", so you can see openssl knows about them but the config turns them off.)

(I'm an SSL newbie, please correct any mistakes I've made in the above.)

[1] http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpSslModule#ssl_ciphers

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Re:Why Android SSL was downgraded from AES256-SHA to RC4-MD5... by ge0rg on Monday October 14, 2013 @02:57PM (#6548940)

You are right, the final choice of the algorithm is with the server. I am not sure though if it is possible to give other ciphers a higher priority on the server without completely disabling RC4 (which is still better than no encryption / no connection).

Edit: effhaa mentioned http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_ssl.html#sslhon... for apache in another post.

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Re:Why Android SSL was downgraded from AES256-SHA to RC4-MD5... by mnordhoff_ on Monday October 14, 2013 @03:28PM (#6549100)

Nginx has an equivalent preference, ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on. (Scroll down a bit on evmar's link.)

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