Re: Proposal: Marking HTTP As Non-Secure

> I would like to see some hypothetical encrypted http:// when a browser
> present a page as if it was over https:// if everything of a secure origin
> and as if it was served over plain http if not. That is, if a future browser
> shows warnings for plain http, so it will show the same warnings for
> encrypted http:// with insecure resources.

Browsers have flirted with along the lines of your proposal with
non-blocking mixed content icons. Unfortunately, websites are not
static - so the net effect was that if you watched the address bar
constantly, you'd eventually get notified that your previously-entered
data that you thought will be visible only to a "secure" origin has
been already leaked to / exposed to network attackers.

The main point of having a visible and stable indicator for encrypted
sites is to communicate to the user that the site offers a good degree
of resilience against the examination or modification of the exchanged
data by network attackers. (It is a complicated property and it is
often misunderstood as providing clear-cut privacy assurances for your
online habits, but that's a separate topic.)

Any changes that make this indicator disappear randomly at unexpected
times, or make the already-complicated assurances more fragile and
even harder to explain, are probably not the right way to go.

/mz

Received on Sunday, 14 December 2014 19:48:33 UTC