SSL Ciphers

curl cipher options

With curl's option --tls13-ciphers or CURLOPT_TLS13_CIPHERS users can control which cipher suites to consider when negotiating TLS 1.3 connections. With option --ciphers or CURLOPT_SSL_CIPHER_LIST users can control which cipher suites to consider when negotiating TLS 1.2 (1.1, 1.0) connections.

By default, curl may negotiate TLS 1.3 and TLS 1.2 connections, so the cipher suites considered when negotiating a TLS connection are a union of the TLS 1.3 and TLS 1.2 cipher suites. If you want curl to consider only TLS 1.3 cipher suites for the connection, you have to set the minimum TLS version to 1.3 by using --tlsv1.3 or CURLOPT_SSLVERSION with CURL_SSLVERSION_TLSv1_3.

Both the TLS 1.3 and TLS 1.2 cipher options expect a list of cipher suites separated by colons (:). This list is parsed opportunistically, cipher suites that are not recognized or implemented are ignored. As long as there is at least one recognized cipher suite in the list, the list is considered valid.

For both the TLS 1.3 and TLS 1.2 cipher options, the order in which the cipher suites are specified determine the preference of them. When negotiating a TLS connection the server picks a cipher suite from the intersection of the cipher suites supported by the server and the cipher suites sent by curl. If the server is configured to honor the client's cipher preference, the first common cipher suite in the list sent by curl is chosen.

TLS 1.3 cipher suites

Setting TLS 1.3 cipher suites is supported by curl with OpenSSL (1.1.1+, curl 7.61.0+), LibreSSL (3.4.1+, curl 8.3.0+), wolfSSL (curl 8.10.0+) and mbedTLS (3.6.0+, curl 8.10.0+).

The list of cipher suites that can be used for the --tls13-ciphers option:

TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256
TLS_AES_128_CCM_SHA256
TLS_AES_128_CCM_8_SHA256

wolfSSL notes

In addition to above list the following cipher suites can be used: TLS_SM4_GCM_SM3 TLS_SM4_CCM_SM3 TLS_SHA256_SHA256 TLS_SHA384_SHA384. Usage of these cipher suites is not recommended. (The last two cipher suites are NULL ciphers, offering no encryption whatsoever.)

TLS 1.2 (1.1, 1.0) cipher suites

Setting TLS 1.2 cipher suites is supported by curl with OpenSSL, LibreSSL, BoringSSL, mbedTLS (curl 8.8.0+), wolfSSL (curl 7.53.0+), Secure Transport (curl 7.77.0+) and BearSSL (curl 7.83.0+). Schannel does not support setting cipher suites directly, but does support setting algorithms (curl 7.61.0+), see Schannel notes below.

For TLS 1.2 cipher suites there are multiple naming schemes, the two most used are with OpenSSL names (e.g. ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256) and IANA names (e.g. TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256). IANA names of TLS 1.2 cipher suites look similar to TLS 1.3 cipher suite names, to distinguish them note that TLS 1.2 names contain _WITH_, while TLS 1.3 names do not. When setting TLS 1.2 cipher suites with curl it is recommended that you use OpenSSL names as these are most widely recognized by the supported SSL backends.

The complete list of cipher suites that may be considered for the --ciphers option is extensive, it consists of more than 300 ciphers suites. However, nowadays for most of them their usage is discouraged, and support for a lot of them have been removed from the various SSL backends, if ever implemented at all.

A shortened list (based on recommendations by Mozilla) of cipher suites, which are (mostly) supported by all SSL backends, that can be used for the --ciphers option:

ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256
ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256
ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305
ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305
DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256
DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
DHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305
ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256
ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256
ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA
ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA
ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384
ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384
ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA
ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA
DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256
DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256
AES128-GCM-SHA256
AES256-GCM-SHA384
AES128-SHA256
AES256-SHA256
AES128-SHA
AES256-SHA
DES-CBC3-SHA

See this list for a complete list of TLS 1.2 cipher suites.

OpenSSL notes

In addition to specifying a list of cipher suites, OpenSSL also accepts a format with specific cipher strings (like TLSv1.2, AESGCM, CHACHA20) and !, - and + operators. Refer to the OpenSSL cipher documentation for further information on that format.

Schannel notes

Schannel does not support setting individual TLS 1.2 cipher suites directly. It only allows the enabling and disabling of encryption algorithms. These are in the form of CALG_xxx, see the Schannel ALG_ID documentation for a list of these algorithms. Also, (since curl 7.77.0) SCH_USE_STRONG_CRYPTO can be given to pass that flag to Schannel, lookup the documentation for the Windows version in use to see how that affects the cipher suite selection. When not specifying the --chiphers and --tl13-ciphers options curl passes this flag by default.

Examples

curl \
  --tls13-ciphers TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256:TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256 \
  --ciphers ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:\
ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305 \
  https://example.com/

Restrict ciphers to aes128-gcm and chacha20. Works with OpenSSL, LibreSSL, mbedTLS and wolfSSL.

curl \
  --tlsv1.3 \
  --tls13-ciphers TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256:TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256 \
  https://example.com/

Restrict to only TLS 1.3 with aes128-gcm and chacha20 ciphers. Works with OpenSSL, LibreSSL, mbedTLS, wolfSSL and Schannel.

curl \
  --ciphers ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:\
ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305 \
  https://example.com/

Restrict TLS 1.2 ciphers to aes128-gcm and chacha20, use default TLS 1.3 ciphers (if TLS 1.3 is available). Works with OpenSSL, LibreSSL, BoringSSL, mbedTLS, wolfSSL, Secure Transport and BearSSL.