Mozilla re-enables support for legacy tls 1.0 and 1.1 in Firefox

Mozilla is re-enabling support for the deprecated tls 1.0 and tls 1.1 protocols in Firefox, having previously removed them. In this way, the company wants to keep government websites accessible during the corona pandemic that still use the old protocols.

Mozilla puts the changes in the release notes of Firefox 74.0. That version came out a week and a half ago. It was the first version of Mozilla to disable support for tls versions 1.0 and 1.1. Websites that use protocols older than tls 1.2 and 1.3 could no longer be visited in Firefox from that moment on. Users were then shown an error page with a button to force newer tls versions. Those changes have since been reversed, Mozilla says. “We are doing this indefinitely to improve the accessibility of government websites that post Covid-19 information,” the company wrote.

Tls 1.0 and tls 1.1 have been obsolete for a long time. Earlier this year, in addition to Mozilla, Apple, Google and Microsoft also started phasing out the protocol in browsers Safari, Chrome and Edge. It is not known which government websites are currently still using tls 1.0 and 1.1. The protocol is still little used.