How to disable SSLv3 to mitigate against POODLE exploit for Confluence 5.7.0 or below
Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Summary
If you have enabled the SSL connector for Confluence using <confluence_install>/conf/server.xml, the default settings do not block SSLv3 connections which can be exploited by the POODLE fallback attack. There are two changes that need to be made to the SSL connector. By default, the SSL connector sets sslProtocol="TLS" which starts both TLS connectors and SSLv3 connectors. You can tell if you are affected by opening <confluence_install>/conf/server.xml and find the SSL connector, example follows:
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<Connector port="8443" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true"
acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true"
clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" SSLEnabled="true"
URIEncoding="UTF-8" keystorePass="<MY_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD>"/>You may also notice that some web browsers, such as Google Chrome fail to browse to your SSL enabled instance, with the following error (or similar)
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A secure connection cannot be established because this site uses an unsupported protocolWorkaround
Edit the SSL connector in
server.xmlas follows:1 2 3 4 5 6<Connector port="8443" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75" enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true" acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true" clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" sslEnabledProtocols="TLSv1.2,TLSv1.1,TLSv1" SSLEnabled="true" URIEncoding="UTF-8" keystorePass="<MY_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD>"/>In older versions of Tomcat (up to 6.0.32) the property sslEnabledProtocols didn't exist. If you're running Confluence 4.0.X or older, please edit the SSL connector as follows instead:
1 2 3 4 5 6<Connector port="8443" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75" enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true" acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true" clientAuth="false" sslProtocols="TLSv1,TLSv1.1,TLSv1.2" SSLEnabled="true" URIEncoding="UTF-8" keystorePass="<MY_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD>"/>At this point, you can start Confluence and use something like SSLScan to verify that connections can only be made through TLS and not SSLv3.
Solution
Install Confluence 5.7.1 or higher as it includes a bundled Tomcat that is not affected by POODLE
CONFSERVER-35386 - SSLv3 Is Not Disabled When sslProtocol is Set to TLS, Vulnerable to POODLE
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