.NET Core 3 TLS 1.3 & OpenSSL 1.1.1 on Linux

.NET Core now takes advantage of TLS 1.3 support in OpenSSL 1.1.1, when it is available in a given environment.

• TLS 1.3 improves the connection times and reduce round trips required between the client and the server.
• It also improved security because of the removal of various obsolete and insecure cryptographic algorithms.

.NET Core 3.0 uses OpenSSL 1.1.1, OpenSSL 1.1.0, or OpenSSL 1.0.2 on a Linux system. Windows and macOS do not yet support TLS 1.3. When OpenSSL 1.1.1 is available, both System.Net.Security.SslStream and System.Net.Http.HttpClient types will use TLS 1.3 by assuming both the client and server support TLS 1.3.

SslStream

SslStream provides a stream used for client-server communication that uses the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) security protocol to authenticate the server and optionally the client.

HttpClient

HttpClient provides a base class for sending HTTP requests and receiving HTTP responses from a resource identified by a URI.

Example

The following C# 8.0 example demonstrates .NET Core 3.0 on Ubuntu 18.10 connecting to https://www.cloudflare.com:

using System;
using System.Net.Security;
using System.Net.Sockets;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace whats_new
{
    public static class TLS
    {
        public static async Task ConnectCloudFlare()
        {
            var targetHost = "www.cloudflare.com";

            using TcpClient tcpClient = new TcpClient();

            await tcpClient.ConnectAsync(targetHost, 443);

            using SslStream sslStream = new SslStream(tcpClient.GetStream());

            await sslStream.AuthenticateAsClientAsync(targetHost);
            await Console.Out.WriteLineAsync($"Connected to {targetHost} with {sslStream.SslProtocol}");
        }
    }
}