Server accepts a weak cipher suite

MediumConfirmedQuick wintls.protocols.weak-cipher

What this check looks for

One of the encryption methods on offer is outdated. It is not trivially broken, but it has known weaknesses and nothing current needs it.

Why it matters

These suites exist only for clients that no longer visit websites. Removing them costs no reachability and removes a target an attacker can steer a connection towards.

When the check passes, your report says: “Every cipher suite on offer is a current one”.

What it costs your score

When this check fails it removes 10 points from your TLS score, before the status, confidence and repeat multipliers are applied. TLS carries a weight of 15 in the overall score.

It shares the tls.protocols family ceiling of 40 points: however many findings that family produces, together they cannot remove more than that from TLS. One underlying problem showing up in several places is still one problem.

Severity: medium
Default confidence: confirmed
Status when triggered: warn
Deduction: 10 points
Family cap: tls.protocols · 40
Category: TLS
Module: Tls protocols
Fix owned by: user
In the ruleset since: 2026.09

How the whole score is calculated

How to fix it

Drop the legacy suites and keep the AEAD ones.

Nothing current negotiates these, so removing them costs no compatibility.

Adopt the Mozilla intermediate cipher list rather than editing the existing one.
If a specific old client genuinely needs a legacy suite, isolate it on its own hostname rather than weakening the main site.

How to confirm it worked

nmap --script ssl-enum-ciphers -p 443 ‹host›

A named slot like ‹domain› — and the braces left in the configuration below — is filled in with your own values when this rule appears on a report.

Remediation by platform

nginx

ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers off;
ssl_ciphers ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384;

Apache

SSLProtocol             -all +TLSv1.2 +TLSv1.3
SSLHonorCipherOrder     off
SSLCipherSuite          ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305

Caddy

‹host› {
	tls {
		protocols tls1.2 tls1.3
	}
}

Cloudflare

SSL/TLS → Edge Certificates → Minimum TLS Version → TLS 1.2.

Put this in the http block so it applies to every server block; a per-server ssl_protocols directive silently overrides it for that server only.
Set it in the main configuration, not in .htaccess — SSLProtocol is a server-context directive and .htaccess cannot change it.
Caddy already defaults to TLS 1.2 and 1.3; an explicit block is only needed to pin them.
This setting governs the connection between visitors and Cloudflare's edge only. It does not change what the origin server negotiates, and an origin that is reachable directly — by IP, or through any DNS record that is not proxied — still accepts what it accepted before. This scan measured the origin, so apply the server-side configuration as well.

Technical detail

‹host› accepted ‹cipher›. ‹reason›

3DES is the usual case: its 64-bit block size makes Sweet32 (CVE-2016-2183) practical against a long-lived connection, and OpenSSL moved it out of DEFAULT in 1.1.0. CBC-mode suites without AEAD are in the same category — usable, but with a decade of padding-oracle history behind them.