Directadmin Old Cyphers for Mail

Posted on May 21, 2025

If a user insists on maintaining support for legacy systems to enable connections using older SSL methods, one option is to set ssl_configuration=old in the options.conf file of custombuild. However, this setting changes the SSL ciphers for all web-related services as well. Alternatively, it is possible to downgrade the ciphers exclusively for mail services without affecting the web services.

exim

To customise exim, create a file if it does not exist /etc/exim.variables.conf.custom and add these variables (replace the variable values in case you already have them defined defined there):

openssl_options = +no_sslv2 +no_sslv3 +cipher_server_preference
tls_require_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-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA

dovecot 2.4

For dovecot, you’ll need to create a custom ssl.conf file to apply the customisation. Contents for the dovecot 2.4 needs to be added to this file: /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/custom/dovecot/2.4/conf/ssl.conf

ssl_server_cert_file = /etc/exim.cert
ssl_server_key_file = /etc/exim.key
ssl_server_dh_file = /etc/dovecot/dh.pem

ssl_min_protocol = TLSv1
ssl_cipher_list = 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-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA
ssl_server_prefer_ciphers = server

dovecot 2.3

The older dovecot has a different customisation: /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/custom/dovecot/conf/ssl.conf

And a slight difference in config:

ssl_server_cert_file = /etc/exim.cert
ssl_server_key_file = /etc/exim.key
ssl_server_dh_file = /etc/dovecot/dh.pem

ssl_min_protocol = TLSv1
ssl_cipher_list = 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-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA
ssl_server_prefer_ciphers = yes