A cipher suite is a combination of a key exchange algorithm, authentication method, bulk encryption , and message authentication code. cipher In a like , the client and server must agree on a cipher suite before they can begin communicating securely. A typical cipher suite looks like ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 or ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256, indicating: cryptosystem TLS ECDHE (elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman ephemeral) for key exchange RSA for authentication AES-128 as the cipher, with Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) as the block cipher mode of operation SHA-256 as the hash-based message authentication code (HMAC) Learn more Mozilla recommended cipher suite choices for TLS View Previous Terms: Block cipher mode of operation Certificate authority Challenge-response authentication Cipher Ciphertext CORS CORS-safelisted request header CORS-safelisted response header Cross-site scripting Cryptanalysis Cryptographic hash function Cryptography CSP CSRF Decryption Digital certificate DTLS (Datagram Transport Layer Security) Encryption Forbidden header name Forbidden response header name Hash HMAC HPKP HSTS HTTPS Key MitM OWASP Preflight request Public-key cryptography Reporting directive Robots.txt Same-origin policy Session Hijacking SQL Injection Symmetric-key cryptography TOFU Transport Layer Security (TLS) Credits Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Cipher_suite Published under license Open CC Attribution ShareAlike 3.0