Unsupported protocol - and the geeks score another own goal...

As of the latest Chrome, Edge, Opera, and FireFox updates all of my ‘obsolete’ hardware (routers, NAS drives, network switches, etc) are inaccessible as they don’t use TLS 1.2. I’m unlikely to be alone in this. I can understand the technical decision but IMHO it’s wrong and, actually pretty stupid. To make it more than a click through warning to access these obsolete devices on my local subnet. Sure ban connections to other subnets (that would cause me pain too as I manage some stuff via a VPN) but 90% of users would be fine.

So now we’ll see a lot of “The client and server don’t support a common SSL protocol version or cipher suite.” or “This site can’t provide a secure connection” errors when trying to access older hardware.

I now have an old version of FireFox installed with updates disabled and I know to only use it for my local stuff that doesn’t work with updated browsers. It’s a bit clunky, even with shortcuts which run the browser with the correct URL, but it works. I’m not sure that everyone will end up with this kind of set up; they may just have someone suggest that they downgrade their main browser and turn off updates…

Allowing access to the local subnet with a click through scary warning would probably be ‘safer’ than forcing people to find out how to work around the problem or preventing them from ever adjusting their routers, or whatever, again…

I’m sure there are lots and lots of valid reasons for the decision; they’re just all wrong when the end result will be non-technical users downgrading their browsers and turning off updates.