Security enhancements to TLS for improved national control

Abstract

Establishing a secure connection is a must nowadays since a lot of transactions are being done online. For instance, it can vary from buying items from small shops into buying extremely expensive equipment online. Hence, the need for securing the sessions and e-commerce is highly required. Furthermore, any government entity will require its communication to be secured from eavesdropping and Man in The Middle (MITM) attacks. Web Threats are spreading around the world and becoming more aggressive every year. Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) were established as a standard to encrypt the communication between the client and the server. Everyday new vulnerabilities and loopholes in the internet protocols are being discovered. Hence an enhancement to the TLS protocol is a must. This need rises since most transactions and confidential communication is done through the network. Then information security researchers and developers have to test, develop, verify and enhance the security of the network. Throughout this report a study of the TLS protocol will be highlighted and its relative security. Later, a proposed method to test different TLS protocols will be explained. Future work will include developing a prototype that will be used to test different TLS protocol versions.