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Mozilla Considers Phasing Out Unencrypted HTTP

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday April 15 2015, @04:52AM   Printer-friendly
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.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:24PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:24PM (#171003) Journal

    I run a few little websites that don't have encryption, because they really don't need it. The busiest site is a phpBB forum for owners of a certain brand of recreational vehicle/campervan. It would cost me an extra $10/month to add an SSL server to my account on my hosting provider - not huge money, but I already spend $200/year hosting the sites, out of my own pocket. Plus, there's the cost of the certs themselves. I have no advertising, no paid subscriptions, no donations, nothing to earn back that money, and I don't mind; it's a hobby, not a business. In fact, if I started receiving money for it, I might cause issues with my actual job; so it's best to keep it free. To me, it's how the internet was supposed to work, and I'm glad I'm keeping that concept alive in my tiny corner.

    A forum is a great example of something which *really* ought to be encrypted. Sure, maybe the posts on the forums aren't that important, but what about protecting the users? What about the guy who's using the same password for your forum as he is for his email? You are transmitting his password in plaintext and he probably assumes it's secure. If he's using public wifi then congratulations -- your lax security just got one of your users hacked. And they don't even know how.

    It shouldn't cost $10/month to add SSL. I've got SSL on two websites right now and I haven't paid a dime for it. You can probably get a year free from your domain registrar or web host; if not there's StartSSL, there's self-signed certs, and there will soon be Let's Encrypt. Or you could just pay for the cert -- if your host/registrar wants $10/*month* for that, you need to find a new one. Should be $15/year at most. Try Gandi.net maybe. And it shouldn't take more than a few minutes to get the cert installed and configured. SSL isn't just for major corporations; it's cheaper than the cheapest web hosting, and it's just as easy to get configured.

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