TLS version support

TL;DR for those who know the background

By default we support TLS 1.2 and 1.3 for websites; older protocol versions can be supported for custom domains -- if you have old devices connecting to your site and you need to use them, then contact us -- but do note that this will mean reduced security for your site.

In more detail...

What is TLS?

TLS (Transport Layer Security) is the name of the protocol used to make secure connections across the Internet. The earlier protocol that it is based on was called SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and that name is also still used by some people when talking about TLS.

The use of TLS is what makes an HTTPS website secure -- when a site is visited over HTTP, all of the data is sent in the clear, so someone who was able to tap into the communications could see what is being sent and received. By contrast, HTTPS sends the data over a TLS connection, which means that anyone who intercepted it would just see encrypted data.

TLS versions

There are a number of versions of the TLS protocol, and of the SSL protocol that preceded it. Older versions have become deprecated as security problems with them have been identified. As of this writing:

  • SSL 1.0 -- never released because it had security problems
  • SSL 2.0 -- released in 1995, deprecated in 2011
  • SSL 3.0 -- released in 1996, deprecated in 2015
  • TLS 1.0 -- released in 1999, deprecated in 2020
  • TLS 1.1 -- released in 2006, deprecated in 2020
  • TLS 1.2 -- released in 2008, still regarded as OK
  • TLS 1.3 -- released in 2018, still regarded as OK

Which versions does PythonAnywhere support?

By default on PythonAnywhere, websites that we host are only available over TLS 1.2 and 1.3. The reason we do not support older TLS versions is that an attacker can (in theory) alter a connection so that it switches over to using an older, broken version. This is known as a protocol downgrade attack.

More concretely:

  • A browser connects to your website using TLS 1.2.
  • The attacker, who is somehow able to monitor the connection, injects some extra data into it.
  • The browser interprets this extra data as the server saying "I'd rather use TLS 1.1".
  • The browser and the server continue to communicate using TLS 1.1.
  • The attacker records the data and, due to a security problem with 1.1, is able to decrypt it.

What that means is that any server that supports TLS 1.1 or earlier is not really secure. So our normal web-serving infrastructure only supports 1.2 or higher.

Older devices

Lack of support for TLS 1.1 can cause problems with older devices. Some old Android devices (older than 5.0 "Lollipop") don't support TLS 1.2, and by default Windows 7 doesn't have it switched on (though support for it is built in). Some old Internet-of-Things devices don't support it either.

That probably won't matter for most websites -- it's better to have a properly secure site that doesn't accept HTTPS connections from really old operating systems and browsers than it is to have a site that isn't secure.

But for some people, support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 might be necessary -- for example, if your site is frequently used by people who are using Android devices that haven't had an OS update since Lollipop was released in 2014, or by people using old Windows 7 machines.

Enabling support for legacy TLS

For custom domains, we can set things up so that your site is handled by special "legacy TLS" servers which offer those lower-security protocols. Unfortunately we can't do that for websites that are running as subdomains of pythonanywhere.com or eu.pythonanywhere.com

It's a two-step process to get that set up:

  • Firstly, contact us at support@pythonanywhere.com so that we can set things up on the backend servers.
  • Next, update your CNAME -- normally you would point your domain at our servers with a CNAME value of the form webapp-XXXX.pythonanywhere.com or webapp-XXXX.eu.pythonanywhere.com. For legacy TLS sites, you would instead need to point it at legacy-tls.pythonanywhere.com or legacy-tls.eu.pythonanywhere.com

Please note, however, that doing this will make your site potentially vulnerable to protocol downgrade attacks, even for the people who are accessing it using the latest and greatest browsers and operating systems. They might connect using 1.3, but be downgraded to 1.1. The only way to be fully secure is to not allow old versions of TLS at all.