Enable IE 11 in TLS 1.2 configuration

Taken from Qualys SSL Labs User Agent Capabilities for IE 11 under Windows 7 (see link 1 below), IE 11 supports the ciphers TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256, TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, and TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256.


My nginx 1.18.0 configuration looks as follows:

ssl_dhparam /etc/dhparam.pem; # 1024 bits
ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
ssl_ciphers 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-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers off;
ssl_early_data on;


When I pass the cipher configuration to openssl, I receive the following:

# openssl ciphers -V '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-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256'

0x13,0x02 - TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLSv1.3 Kx=any Au=any Enc=AESGCM(256) Mac=AEAD
0x13,0x03 - TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256 TLSv1.3 Kx=any Au=any Enc=CHACHA20/POLY1305(256) Mac=AEAD
0x13,0x01 - TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLSv1.3 Kx=any Au=any Enc=AESGCM(128) Mac=AEAD
0xC0,0x2B - ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 TLSv1.2 Kx=ECDH Au=ECDSA Enc=AESGCM(128) Mac=AEAD
0xC0,0x2F - ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 TLSv1.2 Kx=ECDH Au=RSA Enc=AESGCM(128) Mac=AEAD
0xC0,0x2C - ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 TLSv1.2 Kx=ECDH Au=ECDSA Enc=AESGCM(256) Mac=AEAD
0xC0,0x30 - ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 TLSv1.2 Kx=ECDH Au=RSA Enc=AESGCM(256) Mac=AEAD
0xCC,0xA9 - ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305 TLSv1.2 Kx=ECDH Au=ECDSA Enc=CHACHA20/POLY1305(256) Mac=AEAD
0xCC,0xA8 - ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305 TLSv1.2 Kx=ECDH Au=RSA Enc=CHACHA20/POLY1305(256) Mac=AEAD
0x00,0x9E - DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 TLSv1.2 Kx=DH Au=RSA Enc=AESGCM(128) Mac=AEAD
0x00,0x9F - DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 TLSv1.2 Kx=DH Au=RSA Enc=AESGCM(256) Mac=AEAD


The IE 11 supported ciphers (e.g. 0x9F) are available here.


However, when I access the website, I only able to select one of the following ciphers:

TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256


The IE 11 compatible ciphers are gone now (checked with SSL Test from Qualys SSL Labs, and on a Windows 7 VM).

IE 11 on Windows 7 displays a generic error message about activating TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2, but all those are already activated (checkbox ticked).

How to allow the IE 11 ciphers in nginx?


1: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/viewClient.html?name=IE&version=11&platform=Win%207&key=143