Netflix's security changes to its platform
Recently, the US streaming giant announced that it was taking action to improve security on its platform by switching to TLS 1.3.
This improvement process has brought another rather unexpected but beneficial effect in some way. Indeed Netflix realized that the videos to be now launched more than 8% faster.
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As you probably know, the TLS (Transport Layer Security) in its version 1.3 is one of the internet standards that was launched in August 2018 after being approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), one of the bodies developing its Standards in March of that year. It is in fact a security protocol that ensures the protection of exchanges on the Internet. It has the potential to meet several security objectives in operation according to a client-server model.
Initially, this protocol is used to combat espionage and the use of fake messages for various reasons and by several Internet applications. It can no doubt be said that this is the most used standard in the world in terms of security protocol. That's why the netflix giant decided to opt for this standard, especially its recent version. this has not only increased quality in terms of security, but has also given more performance to the platform's streaming offering. "At Netflix, we are committed to delivering the best streaming experiences. We want playback to start instantly and never stop unexpectedly in any network environment. We are also committed to protecting user privacy and service security without sacrificing any part of the reading experience. To achieve this, we effectively use ABR (adaptive flow streaming) for a better reading experience, DRM (Digital Right Management) to protect our service and TLS (Transport Layer Security) to protect customer privacy and create a safer streaming experience." Explains Sekwon Choi in a blog post.
Netflix has also touted the safety quality of this version of TLS 1.3. They pointed out the fact that the phase of negotiations and much shorter This then allows to ensure a more secure link. The US giant also highlights the continuing confidentiality."One thing we believe is very important at Netflix is the provision of PFS (Perfect Forward Secrecy). PFS is a feature of the key exchange algorithm that ensures that session keys will not be compromised, even if the server's private key is compromised. By generating new keys for each session, PFS protects past sessions from future compromise of secret keys." He's noticing.So with version 1.3 of the TLS, the management of the PFS is more rigorously supported. And Netflix says, "Even with the previous version of TLS 1.2, Netflix has always selected a key exchange algorithm that provides PFS such as ECDHE (Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman Ephemeral)."
Between the effectiveness of the new protocol, the American streaming giant has highlighted the fact that playing a video via its platform becomes even faster before the adoption of version 1.3 of the TLS. This is even when the network is cluttered. "After analyzing the composition of the protocol, we suspected that TLS 1.3 would provide us with better security, but we didn't know how it would work in the streaming environment. Since the performance functionality of TLS 1.3 is 0-RTT mode with the takeover of the handshake, our hypothesis was that TLS 1.3 would reduce the playback time, as we are no longer required to wait for the end of the handshake and we can instead issue the HTTP query for multimedia data and receive the HTTP response for multimedia data earlier." Points out Netflix. The giant explains that wind improvements from 3.5 to 8.2% compared to the quality of the video. "Based on the security analysis, we are confident that TLS 1.3 improves communications security compared to TLS 1.2. Based on the feedback, we are convinced that TLS 1.3 offers us a better streaming experience," concluded the streaming giant.
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