Welcome to Star Trek Simulation Forum

Register now to gain access to all of our features. Once registered and logged in, you will be able to contribute to this site by submitting your own content or replying to existing content. You'll be able to customize your profile, receive reputation points as a reward for submitting content, while also communicating with other members via your own private inbox, plus much more! This message will be removed once you have signed in.

Sign in to follow this  
Followers 0
Webmaster

Improving STSF.net Website Security

With the launch of STSF v3.0, I've taken the opportunity to go back and work on some things to improve the overall security of the website.  

Starting today, all communication with the STSF server will be encrypted via TLS (formerly known as SSL).  The benefits of this include:

  • Better overall security (someone sitting between you and the STSF servers cannot intercept/modify requests).  
  • Improved SEO (Google is starting to penalize sites not making use of SSL and ranking them lower in it's search listings).  

Now...  the only downside to this is that not all operating system and web browser combinations support this higher level of security.  (I'm using the same cipher suites and encryption protocols used by the major banks.)

As a result, the following browser/operating system combinations are no longer supported by STSF:

  • Android 4.3 or below
  • IE6 (Windows XP)
  • IE7 (Vista)
  • IE8 (XP)
  • IE 8-10 (Windows 7)
  • Safari 6.04 or below (Mac)

In case anyone is wondering....  we currently have an A+ on the Qualys SSL Labs scanner: 

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.stsf.net&hideResults=on

Compare that to Bank of America who currently only has an A- with the same test:

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.bankofamerica.com&hideResults=on

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Sign in to follow this  
Followers 0