Which symmetric key algorithm does SSL use?

Question

I understand that through SSL, the browser gets the public key of the secured website and through public key encryption rsa algorithm, these 2 establish session key and then continue communication thru some symmetric algorithm, because symmetric key encryption/decryption is faster. Which symmetric key algorithm does SSL use? DES? AES? or something else?

Answer 1

When the client connects to the server, it negotiates a so-called ciphersuite (combination of encryption, key exchange, authentication algorithms) to use. Each SSL client or server has a list of allowed ciphersuites and during handshake the client and the server negotiate on what ciphersuite to use. It can happen sometimes, that there's no common denominator (ciphersuites sets don't intersect) and connection can't be established.

Symmetric algorithms supported in SSL are DES, 3DES, ARCFOUR, AES, Camellia, RC2, IDEA, SEED, NULL (no encryption).

Answer 2

During the connection establishment (the "handshake"), the client and server decide upon a "cipher suite" to use. The cipher suite states the algorithms which are used (asymmetric key agreement, symmetric encryption, and integrity check). In details, the client sends a list of the cipher suites it supports, and the server selects one of them, that it also supports. Normally, the server selects the first suite that it supports among those sent by the client (in other words, the ordering of the suites in the client message is its "order of preference" and the server usually honors the client preferences).

For instance, the cipher suite TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA means that the session key will be transmitted with RSA (asymmetric encryption, using the RSA public key from the server certificate), the data will be symmetrically encrypted with 3DES, and the integrity check will use the SHA-1 hash function. See the TLS specification for the list of standard cipher suites (other suites were added later on, in particular some with AES).