Wednesday 22 October 2014

Internet Explorer and Poodles

A few members have contacted us this week, unable to log in to the Members Area (and a few other pages) and we now realise what is causing this problem. Many thanks to a thoughtful member who contacted us with some helpful clues.

Last week Google announced that there was a vulnerability called "Poodle" in the SSL 3.0 protocol for secure web pages and recommended disabling this outdated method, which we dutifully did. However, we hadn't realised that some older versions of Internet Explorer do not use the slightly newer, more secure, TLS method and therefore stopped working when trying to visit our secure pages.

If you've run into this problem it's easy to fix. Open up Internet Options (from the Tools menu or settings button, depending on your set up), go to the Advanced tab and scroll down to the Security section. See the screenshot below:



You should have one of the TLS methods checked and it might be a good idea to uncheck SSL 3.0 too.

Disclaimer: The EBU are not IT security experts. We hope this advice is useful to members who are having problems with Internet Explorer but take no responsibility for any problems that may result.