SSL/TLS error with links and lynx - possibly due to CloudFlare

command-line ssl tls lynx

7,995

First lynx:
According to the report by SSLLabs the server supports only ECDHE ciphers. Based on a packet capture when using lynx in 14.04 it offers no ECDHE ciphers. This means no cipher overlap and thus the handshake fails.

And links:
According to the SSLLabs report the site needs a client with support for SNI. links got SNI support with version 2.10 but you are using 2.8 only. Therefore the handshake will fail.

7,995

Baard Kopperud

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Baard Kopperud over 1 year
I often work in the terminal - for example on a VPS I've set up - including for browsing with links and lynx. Unfortunately I've been getting some errors:

links:
```
Error loading https://www.thepiratebay.se/: 
SSL error
```
lynx:
```
Looking up www.thepiratebay.se first
Looking up www.thepiratebay.se
Making HTTP connection to www.thepiratebay.se
Sending HTTP request.
HTTP request sent; waiting for response.
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
'A'lways allowing from domain '.thepiratebay.se'.
Data transfer complete
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Using https://www.thepiratebay.se/
Looking up www.thepiratebay.se
Making HTTPS connection to www.thepiratebay.se
Retrying connection without TLS.
Looking up www.thepiratebay.se
Making HTTPS connection to www.thepiratebay.se
Alert!: Unable to make secure connection to remote host.

lynx: Can't access startfile http://www.thepiratebay.se/
```
Disclaimer: ThePirateBay is of course just an example - taken completely out of the air... and besides, if I actually used the site, it would only be to read all the in-depth articles...

I've come across the same problem for some other sites too, and I suspect it may have something to do with them using CloudFlare (I'm not sure though)...

firefox and chrome have no SSL/TLS problems with the same sites.

I'm running an current updated Ubuntu 14.04.4 x64 on DigitalOcean.

Edit: Versions:

Lynx:
```
Lynx Version 2.8.8pre.4 (04 Feb 2014)
libwww-FM 2.14, SSL-MM 1.4.1, GNUTLS 2.12.23, ncurses 5.9.20140118(wide)
Built on linux-gnu Feb  5 2014 17:12:49
```
Links:

Links 2.8
- Steffen Ullrich almost 8 years
  
  I would suggest that this is related to SNI. But given the version of Ubuntu you should run Lynx 2.8.8pre4 which has SNI support. Please check the version of lynx you are using, maybe it is an older one.
- Baard Kopperud almost 8 years
  
  @SteffenUllrich Updated question with version-numbers at the end.
- Steffen Ullrich almost 8 years
  
  lynx should have SNI available, links got SNI support only with version 2.10 and you have 2.8.