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from the it's-the-end-of-the-web-as-we-know-it-and-i-feel-fine dept.
Phoronix reports the Mozilla Security Engineering team is planning to make their browser useless for browsing much of the World Wide Web, by deprecating insecure HTTP.
Richard Barnes of Mozilla writes:
In order to encourage web developers to move from HTTP to HTTPS, I would like to propose establishing a deprecation plan for HTTP without security. Broadly speaking, this plan would entail limiting new features to secure contexts, followed by gradually removing legacy features from insecure contexts. Having an overall program for HTTP deprecation makes a clear statement to the web community that the time for plaintext is over -- it tells the world that the new web uses HTTPS, so if you want to use new things, you need to provide security.
See also this document outlining the initial plans.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @05:04AM
Right in the first sentence! Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of shitty editorializing is this?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @05:14AM
The Cool kind, HAND.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @07:55AM
Well, they are already trying for quite some time to make their browser useless.
First, they tried it by leaking memory left and right. Then they tried to get rid of their users by regularly breaking extensions. Then they decided to alienate them by radically changing their interface from time to time, to prevent people getting too familiar to the browser.
But it seems, now they have found the best way to make people abandon their browser: Just make it not work for the web sites people visit!
On a more serious note: Such a tactics can work if you are the clear market leader. But the clear market leader currently is Chrome, with Firefox going down like crazy (only IE goes down faster, but then, they started from a higher level). Providers of HTTP web sites will barely notice the difference (unless they specifically provide Firefox related stuff). However users of Firefox will notice big time, and have a great incentive to switch to another browser.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:39PM
Mozilla's continued market share decline and braindead copycatting of Chrome shows that the product managers over there are a big part of the problem. It's inexplicable that new major versions still break extensions when there are new major versions on a regular basis. They could use some of Ballmer's advice: Developers, developers, developers!
Fortunately Pale Moon is a more traditional variant that takes the security patches without the Chrome-ified interface, and it works with all the extensions I've tried. I would assume they would not include this "security" change.
Does it really matter if my ISP knows I'm reading the Daily Mail and which stories? They're going to see DNS lookups and traffic to the Daily Mail's servers even if it is encrypted.
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday April 15 2015, @08:01AM
The kind that carries on, if you'd bother to keep reading:
"...for browsing much of the World Wide Web"
Much of the World Wide Web runs on http, not https. Mozilla is considering phasing out http support. Therefore it will become useless for browsing much of the World Wide Web.
Yes, it's editorialising, but at least it's true.
(I didn't realise Soylent's motto was "All news. NO LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM FACTS!")
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @01:09PM
As much of a conclusion as you can expect from your sig. *sigh*
No, Mozilla hasn't decided to immediately cut off HTTP. From TFA:
Phase 0: Define “privileged contexts”. This is the thing to which features will be limited, encompassing at least HTTPS origins. This is already in progress in the WebAppSec WG.
Phase 1: Declare that after Date X.0, privileged contexts are required for all new features. We will need to decide (1) the date, and (2) the scope of “new features” -- are things like new CSS attributes included, or only new web APIs?
Phase 2.N: Declare that after Date X.N, privileged contexts are required for set S.N of existing features. The selection of features will need to balance security benefit versus compatibility impact.
Phase 3: Essentially all of the web is HTTPS.
Furthermore:
Phase 2.N will require a little more judgement. Measurements of insecure usage will be needed to gauge both the security benefit and the compatibility impact of removing current API, and there will need to be consensus on when these trade-offs have reached an acceptable level for a feature to be disabled.
Emphasis mine. tl;dr Mozilla plans to stop actively working towards supporting towards supporting HTTP when it becomes sufficiently irrelevant relevant. They aren't even thinking about when at this point, the whole non-news is that they are planning to slowly phase out HTTP somewhere in the very far feature, which is very likely to be true for MS and Google, except their discussion isn't public.
Here's how logic works:
These are my facts. This is my conclusion which follows from these facts.
Here is how logic does not work:
These are my twisted facts which aren't technically completely false. This is the most damning possible conclusion I can extrapolate from this situation.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday April 15 2015, @02:39PM
No, Mozilla hasn't decided to immediately cut off HTTP.
I never said they were going to do it immediately, but other than that you're right that I was way too hasty with my post (and with my reading of the OP's meaning), and looking again I'm also a little surprised I managed to get +5 Insightful so quickly (or at all).
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by GeminiDomino on Wednesday April 15 2015, @05:54PM
You might try keeping the entire context.
useless for browsing much of the World Wide Web
Namely, that large portion of the world wide web that doesn't needlessly use HTTPS.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday April 16 2015, @12:35PM
A https only browser is as useful as a car which steers only to the left.
Umm make it with no brakes, too.
I agree that a correct summary should have been: mozilla troll posts april fool story with a bit of lag.
Account abandoned.