Defaults.Exposed › September 2026 census › v10 registry › Cipher strength
Cipher strength
Methodology v10 · canonical ID cipher-strength · TLS & Certificates · scored · census as of September 5, 2026
Strong encryption protecting data in transit.
Definition
| Canonical ID | cipher-strength |
|---|---|
| Category | TLS & Certificates |
| Grade impact | Scored, counts toward the grade |
| Pass | The negotiated cipher suite is a modern AEAD suite (e.g. AES-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305). |
| Fail | A weak or deprecated cipher (RC4, 3DES, export-grade, CBC-only legacy suites) is negotiated. |
| Example (passing) | Cipher: TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 |
No-data rule: when this check couldn't be determined for a domain (timeout, SERVFAIL, redacted source) it returns N/A and is excluded from that domain's scoring denominator: "couldn't determine" is never counted as a failure. "Determined absent" is a real fail.
Prevalence across the census
The public census rollup does not publish a per-check figure for cipher-strength (as of September 5, 2026).
Whole-census aggregates live at /data; no number is shown here rather than an estimated one.
Census denominator: 316,600,902 graded domains. Aggregates only: never an individual domain's result.
Fix it
Plain-English impact, cost of ignoring it, and step-by-step remediation: defaults.exposed/fix/tls
Cite this check
Defaults.Exposed, "Cipher strength (cipher-strength)", Grading Methodology v10 (census as of September 5, 2026). https://defaults.exposed/methodology/cipher-strength
Permalink: https://defaults.exposed/methodology/cipher-strength ·
All 34 checks: v10 registry ·
Machine-readable: /methodology/checks.json ·
Licence: open data