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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: 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