Tom Tervoort - The road to TLS 1.3

Abstract

Since it was quickly cobbled together by Netscape in order to allow people to buy items over the web, the SSL/TLS protocol has become one of the most popular protocols for secure communications. Unfortunately, designing a cryptographic protocol that satisfied everyone’s needs turned out to be more complex than anticipated, causing the large number of vulnerabilities which plaged each version of it so far.

This talk will cover the evolution of SSL and TLS, and how mistakes from the past informed the design of its newest incarnation: TLS 1.3. It will also examine the new protocols’ considerable improvements in robustness, security and efficiency, and the issues that still remain.

Biography

Tom is a security specialist (i.e. ethical hacker and consultant) at Secura and a PhD student (in the field of medical security) at the AMC hospital. He frequently perform security investigations of complex and unorthodox systems such as cryptographic protocols, identity management systems and blockchain applications.

Tom worked as a software developer before entering the security field, and received a master’s degree in computing science (specialising in programming technology and automatic protocol verification) from Utrecht University.

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