TLS is the standard which defines how web traffic is encrypted. It is what keeps your credit card secure when you buy something on the internet, and it is what should be used (but sometimes isn't) to make sure a password is not snooped when you log into a web site. You know when a web site uses TLS, because the location uses the https prefix and not the http prefix.
In recent months we have seen a lot of "attacks" on TLS. Many with cool names such as BEAST, CRIME, Lucky 13 and TIME. There has also been a recent one involving an attack on using RC4 within TLS, which alas does not have a cool name. Many of these attacks make use of timing information leakge (aka side channels) and some (Lucky 13 and the RC4 attack) attack the underlying cryptography.
Before proceeding we should perhaps recap on a bit of history.
read more.......http://bristolcrypto.blogspot.com/2013/04/is-tls-secure.html