Security

TLS 1.3

2018 redesign of Transport Layer Security.


In plain terms

1-RTT handshake, AEAD-only ciphers, mandatory ECDHE, PSK resumption. The standard.

Origin

RFC 8446, published August 2018, after ~30 working group drafts. Eric Rescorla shepherded it through the IETF. A near-rewrite of TLS 1.2 — handshake compressed to 1 RTT (0-RTT optional), all non-AEAD ciphers removed, RSA key transport gone.

Where it shows up in production
  • Most of the web Cloudflare, AWS, Google, Akamai all default to TLS 1.3 with 1.2 fallback.
  • HTTP/3 QUIC mandates TLS 1.3 — there is no other option. Integrated into the transport.
  • Signal Protocol Uses TLS 1.3-style key derivation primitives (HKDF) for the Double Ratchet.
On Semicolony
Sources & further reading
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