The remote service accepts connections encrypted using SSL 2.0 and/or SSL 3.0. These versions of SSL are affected by several cryptographic flaws, including: - An insecure padding scheme with CBC ciphers. - Insecure session renegotiation and resumption schemes. An attacker can exploit these flaws to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks or to decrypt communications between the affected service and clients. Although SSL/TLS has a secure means for choosing the highest supported version of the protocol (so that these versions will be used only if the client or server support nothing better), many web browsers implement this in an unsafe way that allows an attacker to downgrade a connection (such as in POODLE). Therefore, it is recommended that these protocols be disabled entirely. NIST has determined that SSL 3.0 is no longer acceptable for secure communications. As of the date of enforcement found in PCI DSS v3.1, any version of SSL will not meet the PCI SSC's definition of 'strong cryptography'.

The remote host supports the use of SSL ciphers that offer medium strength encryption. Nessus regards medium strength as any encryption that uses key lengths at least 64 bits and less than 112 bits, or else that uses the 3DES encryption suite. Note that it is considerably easier to circumvent medium strength encryption if the attacker is on the same physical network.

The remote host supports the use of SSL ciphers that offer weak encryption. Note: This is considerably easier to exploit if the attacker is on the same physical network.

The remote service uses an SSL certificate chain that has been signed using a cryptographically weak hashing algorithm (e.g. MD2, MD4, MD5, or SHA1). These signature algorithms are known to be vulnerable to collision attacks. An attacker can exploit this to generate another certificate with the same digital signature, allowing an attacker to masquerade as the affected service. Note that this plugin reports all SSL certificate chains signed with SHA-1 that expire after January 1, 2017 as vulnerable. This is in accordance with Google's gradual sunsetting of the SHA-1 cryptographic hash algorithm. Note that certificates in the chain that are contained in the Nessus CA database (known_CA.inc) have been ignored.

The remote service uses an SSL certificate chain that has been signed using a cryptographically weak hashing algorithm (e.g. MD2, MD4, MD5, or SHA1). These signature algorithms are known to be vulnerable to collision attacks. An attacker can exploit this to generate another certificate with the same digital signature, allowing an attacker to masquerade as the affected service. Note that this plugin reports all SSL certificate chains signed with SHA-1 that expire after January 1, 2017 as vulnerable. This is in accordance with Google's gradual sunsetting of the SHA-1 cryptographic hash algorithm. Note that certificates in the chain that are contained in the Nessus CA database (known_CA.inc) have been ignored.

The remote host is running a Telnet server over an unencrypted channel. Using Telnet over an unencrypted channel is not recommended as logins, passwords, and commands are transferred in cleartext. This allows a remote, man-in-the-middle attacker to eavesdrop on a Telnet session to obtain credentials or other sensitive information and to modify traffic exchanged between a client and server. SSH is preferred over Telnet since it protects credentials from eavesdropping and can tunnel additional data streams such as an X11 session.

The server's X.509 certificate cannot be trusted. This situation can occur in three different ways, in which the chain of trust can be broken, as stated below : - First, the top of the certificate chain sent by the server might not be descended from a known public certificate authority. This can occur either when the top of the chain is an unrecognized, self-signed certificate, or when intermediate certificates are missing that would connect the top of the certificate chain to a known public certificate authority. - Second, the certificate chain may contain a certificate that is not valid at the time of the scan. This can occur either when the scan occurs before one of the certificate's 'notBefore' dates, or after one of the certificate's 'notAfter' dates. - Third, the certificate chain may contain a signature that either didn't match the certificate's information or could not be verified. Bad signatures can be fixed by getting the certificate with the bad signature to be re-signed by its issuer. Signatures that could not be verified are the result of the certificate's issuer using a signing algorithm that Nessus either does not support or does not recognize. If the remote host is a public host in production, any break in the chain makes it more difficult for users to verify the authenticity and identity of the web server. This could make it easier to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks against the remote host.

The X.509 certificate chain for this service is not signed by a recognized certificate authority. If the remote host is a public host in production, this nullifies the use of SSL as anyone could establish a man-in-the-middle attack against the remote host. Note that this plugin does not check for certificate chains that end in a certificate that is not self-signed, but is signed by an unrecognized certificate authority.

The remote host supports the use of RC4 in one or more cipher suites. The RC4 cipher is flawed in its generation of a pseudo-random stream of bytes so that a wide variety of small biases are introduced into the stream, decreasing its randomness. If plaintext is repeatedly encrypted (e.g., HTTP cookies), and an attacker is able to obtain many (i.e., tens of millions) ciphertexts, the attacker may be able to derive the plaintext.

The remote host supports the use of RC4 in one or more cipher suites. The RC4 cipher is flawed in its generation of a pseudo-random stream of bytes so that a wide variety of small biases are introduced into the stream, decreasing its randomness. If plaintext is repeatedly encrypted (e.g., HTTP cookies), and an attacker is able to obtain many (i.e., tens of millions) ciphertexts, the attacker may be able to derive the plaintext.

The remote service accepts connections encrypted using TLS 1.0. TLS 1.0 has a number of cryptographic design flaws. Modern implementations of TLS 1.0 mitigate these problems, but newer versions of TLS like 1.2 and 1.3 are designed against these flaws and should be used whenever possible. As of March 31, 2020, Endpoints that aren’t enabled for TLS 1.2 and higher will no longer function properly with major web browsers and major vendors. PCI DSS v3.2 requires that TLS 1.0 be disabled entirely by June 30, 2018, except for POS POI terminals (and the SSL/TLS termination points to which they connect) that can be verified as not being susceptible to any known exploits.

The remote service accepts connections encrypted using TLS 1.1. TLS 1.1 lacks support for current and recommended cipher suites. Ciphers that support encryption before MAC computation, and authenticated encryption modes such as GCM cannot be used with TLS 1.1 As of March 31, 2020, Endpoints that are not enabled for TLS 1.2 and higher will no longer function properly with major web browsers and major vendors.

The remote host answers to an ICMP timestamp request. This allows an attacker to know the date that is set on the targeted machine, which may assist an unauthenticated, remote attacker in defeating time-based authentication protocols. Timestamps returned from machines running Windows Vista / 7 / 2008 / 2008 R2 are deliberately incorrect, but usually within 1000 seconds of the actual system time.

At least one of the X.509 certificates sent by the remote host has a key that is shorter than 2048 bits. According to industry standards set by the Certification Authority/Browser (CA/B) Forum, certificates issued after January 1, 2014 must be at least 2048 bits. Some browser SSL implementations may reject keys less than 2048 bits after January 1, 2014. Additionally, some SSL certificate vendors may revoke certificates less than 2048 bits before January 1, 2014. Note that Nessus will not flag root certificates with RSA keys less than 2048 bits if they were issued prior to December 31, 2010, as the standard considers them exempt.