Live data from Hacker News

HTTPS for GitHub Pages

github.com

61–70 of 102 posts

Re: HTTPS for GitHub Pages

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not until Fastly (Github's CDN) makes it possible.

Fastly does support https so I'm assuming it's a configuration problem.

Frequently changing pk enc key to setup tls connections with different certs can have a performance impact too. Let alone security implications of managing someone else's private keys.

Re: HTTPS for GitHub Pages

#62
post #33
post #24

Does anyone know if github is planning to support https for custom domains?

"HTTPS is not supported for GitHub Pages using custom domains"[1] which is annoying. [1]: https://help.github.com/articles/securing-your-github-pages-...

Custom domains would be huge for me, but I totally understand. How would they ever manage to do it? They'd either need a zillion separate entries, or the broadest wildcard cert ever.

Re: HTTPS for GitHub Pages

#63
post #3

About damn time! I "cheated" the system by having a script that will redirect you to the HTTPS version if you click on anything from the HTTP protocol, which kind of accomplishes forcing the HTTPS encryption, but not really. Then I've decided to switch to my own domain and just use CloudFlare (+ whitelisting Tor). Now I'm kind of thinking about switching to GitLab Pages since they pretty much kick the hell out of Git…

I’m not familiar with GitLab Pages but you can already use any static site generator with GitHub Pages as well.

To clarify, you mean you can if you add the output to your git repo right? Currently I have gh pages set to automatically build my site with jekyll, but I believe they limit plugins to only safe ones.

Re: HTTPS for GitHub Pages

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does - this is all a setting you can choose and since Github does support HTTPS (and has for a while) you can always set it on "strict" and ensure a continuous encrypted connection on both sides of CloudFlare.

But what certificate will Github present for your custom domain? I don't think you can tell CF to accept Github pages's cert for your own domain. They either use their own CA or don't do auth, right? At least on non-enterprise plans.

CloudFlare is what serves your custom domain.

On the backend you point CloudFlare to https://username.github.io and CF will receive the wildcard certificate for *.github.io

Re: HTTPS for GitHub Pages

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's what you are talking about, you can select "Full (strict)" in the SSL options to enforce origin certificate validation. https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170416-W...

But this doesn't work because the backend certificate is invalid (it covers *.github.io rather then example.com).

But you'd give cf that cname I think

Re: HTTPS for GitHub Pages

#66
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this doesn't work because the backend certificate is invalid (it covers *.github.io rather then example.com).

But you'd give cf that cname I think

Last time I tested this cloudflare validated using the domain name, not the cname.

Re: HTTPS for GitHub Pages

#67
post #54
post #14

Thank you GitHub for this gift, static web sites and now forced https

Forced? You can enable and disable it in every repo's settings.

Not for "GitHub Pages sites created after June 15, 2016 and using a github.io domain."[1]

[1] https://help.github.com/articles/securing-your-github-pages-...

Re: HTTPS for GitHub Pages

#68

Doesn't appear to work with custom domains.

> Doesn't appear to work with custom domains.

Do you have any idea how TLS actually works? If this worked out of the box for custom domains, then GitHub would need to be able to impersonate those domains.

At the very least you'd need a way to upload a private key/cert combo that they could server in response to an SNI request. Given the sheer number of sites that they host (every user effectively has a custom GitHub pages page) that's not really feasible though. Hence only support for *.github.io as that only requires a single wildcard cert.

Re: HTTPS for GitHub Pages

#69
post #68

Doesn't appear to work with custom domains.

> Doesn't appear to work with custom domains. Do you have any idea how TLS actually works? If this worked out of the box for custom domains, then GitHub would need to be able to impersonate those domains. At the very least you'd need a way to upload a private key/cert combo that they could server in response to an SNI request. Given the sheer number of sites that they host (every user effectively has a custom GitHub…

> Do you have any idea how TLS actually works? If this worked out of the box for custom domains, then GitHub would need to be able to impersonate those domains.

If you redirect your domain to my webserver, I can get a certificate for it. E.g. from Let's Encrypt.

Wordpress.com uses that and offers SSL certificates to "million-plus"[0] blogs with custom domains. It's certainly doable at scale, although I totally understand it not having priority for GitHub (esp if it doesn't fit their current technical setup).

[0] https://en.blog.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/https-everywhere-en...

Re: HTTPS for GitHub Pages

#70
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastly does support https so I'm assuming it's a configuration problem.

Frequently changing pk enc key to setup tls connections with different certs can have a performance impact too. Let alone security implications of managing someone else's private keys.

True, but that is a config problem to be fair
Post reply on HN