Defining SSL ciphers defining-ssl-ciphers

The Connector tag in server.xml supports a ciphers attribute to limit the ciphers that can be chosen for an SSL connection.

By default all ciphers are available. The list is comma separated and can contain any of the following values:

SSL_DHE_DSS_EXPORT_WITH_DES40_CBC_SHA

SSL_DHE_DSS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA

SSL_DHE_DSS_WITH_DES_CBC_SHA

SSL_DHE_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_DES40_CBC_SHA

SSL_DHE_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA

SSL_DHE_RSA_WITH_DES_CBC_SHA

SSL_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_DES40_CBC_SHA

SSL_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_RC4_40_MD5

SSL_RSA_WITH_DES_CBC_SHA

SSL_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5

SSL_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA

TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA

TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA

If any of the values is wrong, Tomcat enables every single cipher. So it is essential to check with an external tool after configuration to see which ciphers are actually enabled.

As an example the following configuration enables only the “128-bit” cipher suites and above:

ciphers="SSL_DHE_DSS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA,SSL_DHE_DSS_WITH_DES_CBC_SHA,SSL_DHE_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA,TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA,TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA"