Insecure TLS_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_RC2_CBC_40_MD5
- IANA name:
- TLS_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_RC2_CBC_40_MD5
- Hex code:
- 0x00, 0x06
- TLS Version(s):
- TLS1.0, TLS1.1, TLS1.2, TLS1.3
- Protocol:
- Export-grade Transport Layer Security (TLS EXPORT)
- Key Exchange:
- Rivest Shamir Adleman algorithm (RSA)
- Authentication:
- Rivest Shamir Adleman algorithm (RSA)
- Encryption:
- Rivest Cipher 2 with 40bit key in Cipher Block Chaining mode (RC2 CBC 40)
- Hash:
- HMAC Message Digest 5 (MD5)
- Included in RFC:
- Machine-readable:
- application/json
Export ciphers used to be legally exportable from the United States of America in the 1990s, when exporting military technology was heavily restricted. Nowadays, they are considered insecure (see freakattack.com).
This key exchange algorithm does not support Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) which is recommended, so attackers cannot decrypt the complete communication stream.
There are reports that servers using the RSA authentication algorithm with keys longer than 3072-bit may experience heavy performance issues leading to connection timeouts and even service unavailability if many clients open simultaneous connections.
In 2013, researchers demonstrated a timing attack against several TLS implementations using the CBC encryption algorithm (see isg.rhul.ac.uk). Additionally, the CBC mode is vulnerable to plain-text attacks in TLS 1.0, SSL 3.0 and lower. A fix has been introduced with TLS 1.2 in form of the GCM mode which is not vulnerable to the BEAST attack. GCM should be preferred over CBC.
There exists a related-key attack found in 1997. With this attack, RC2 can be broken (see schneier.com).
The Message Digest 5 algorithm suffers form multiple vulnerabilities and is considered insecure.