It is common practice to prevent the BEAST attack using the following ciphers in Apache SSL configuration:
SSLCipherSuite RC4-SHA:HIGH:!ADH
Unfortunately, RC4 has been found to be flawed and it is now recommended to avoid its use.
From a Nessus report:
SSL RC4 Cipher Suites Supported
The remote host supports the use of RC4 in one or more cipher suites. The RC4 cipher is flawed in its generation of a pseudo-random stream of bytes so that a wide variety of small biases are introduced into the stream, decreasing its randomness.
If plaintext is repeatedly encrypted (e.g. HTTP cookies), and an attacker is able to obtain many (i.e. tens of millions) ciphertexts, the attacker may be able to derive the plaintext.
Solution
Reconfigure the affected application, if possible, to avoid use of RC4 ciphers. Consider using TLS 1.2 with AES-GCM suites subject to browser and web server support.
I have tried to use the following ciphers in my Apache SSL configuration:
SSLCipherSuite HIGH:!ADH:!MD5
Unfortunately, this is vulnerable to BEAST. How can I prevent this without using RC4 cipher suites?
We run on CentOS 6.5 and use the following SSL protocols:
SSLProtocol -ALL -SSLv3 +TLSv1