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Should All Web Traffic Be Encrypted?

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111–120 of 136 posts

Re: Should All Web Traffic Be Encrypted?

#111
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but the fact that copyright infringement is not theft might.

Haha, looks like the MAFIAA war machine has been working pretty effectively that even HN readers are starting to believe it!

I recommend re-reading Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture periodically as an antidote to the reasonablish arguments pouring out of the entertainment industry.

Re: Should All Web Traffic Be Encrypted?

#112
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Referrer information allows website owners to see who is linking to their site. It's like a private, reverse form of tags

I agree that referrer information is useful to site owners. What you need to understand is that just because something is good for site owners, doesn't mean it's good for site visitors, or the web in general. If you wanted to see who was linking to your site, and referrer headers didn't exist, you'd use a search engine. Hell, people would build dedicated search engines which alert you when somebody links to your site…

The interests of web site owners align a lot with the web itself. And referrer headers are much easier than having to build a search engine and being at their whims.

Re: Should All Web Traffic Be Encrypted?

#113
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that referrer information is useful to site owners. What you need to understand is that just because something is good for site owners, doesn't mean it's good for site visitors, or the web in general. If you wanted to see who was linking to your site, and referrer headers didn't exist, you'd use a search engine. Hell, people would build dedicated search engines which alert you when somebody links to your site…

The interests of web site owners align a lot with the web itself. And referrer headers are much easier than having to build a search engine and being at their whims.

"The interests of web site owners align a lot with the web itself."

Not in this particular case.

"And referrer headers are much easier than having to build a search engine and being at their whims."

Absolutely. And if your browser sent a HTTP header containing your name, address, sexual preferences and date of birth, that would also make things even better for website owners. Just imagine how much better they could target their adverts!

Re: Should All Web Traffic Be Encrypted?

#114
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a relative URL. It would be equivalent to http://static4.scirra.net/static4.scirra.net/images/favicon....

Wow, this took forever to click. I have never written sites that spanned several servers like that. Thanks!

It doesn't span several servers. It looks in a directory called static4.scirra.net that is in the webroot of http://static4.scirra.net*.

Re: Should All Web Traffic Be Encrypted?

#115
post #60

For content that is already public but needs to be protected from modification like images and scripts couldn't it be hashed and the hash just sent with the page your viewing. Then the browser could download extra assets from an insecure source like a proxy or cdn and know that it hasn't been modified?

So then the browsers have to implement two security systems.

Not entirely, as SSL already includes a hash. That said, I don't agree with doing it.

However, I do believe that we should investigate ways of authenticating larger downloads automatically.

Re: Should All Web Traffic Be Encrypted?

#116
Sounds at first like an admirable concept, but unfortunately would be incredibly problematic.

What about the case where you're virtual-hosting many sites on one IP address? Since the SSL handshake occurs prior to any HTTP data being sent, and the browser will reject a server-certificate whose hostname does not match, you're normally restricted to one HTTPS domain per IP address.

I gather there are TLS extensions to suppport SSL vhosts, but I don't know how widespread they are. There are also methods of including more than one hostname per certificate, but I'm assuming that when you purchase a SSL cert from a registrar, you're going to be restricted to one host.

Re: Should All Web Traffic Be Encrypted?

#118
post #55

One item that this (excellent) blog post does not adress is what to do about referer information which is generally not passed along when clicking on links on sites being browsed over SSL. In order to "get credit" for all of the traffic that they send everywhere twitter had to develop a fairly elaborate system of redirections (built into t.co) to make sure that clicks from twitter.com ended up being sent out to the r…

If HTTP referrers never existed, the web would still be huge and would still be full of amazing content. Why should we care about retaining referrers? I think the only reason that people dislike the idea of losing them, is because they've got used to them being there. I don't particularly like the fact that sites which I click through to can see where I'm coming from, or what I was searching for, so I've installed a…

Ya this is definitely a valid point of view. I'm not sure if we can get from here to there though. So much of the way that business online is done today is based on the status quo that changing it is pretty hard.

Could happen though I suppose. /shrug/

Re: Should All Web Traffic Be Encrypted?

#119
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If HTTP referrers never existed, the web would still be huge and would still be full of amazing content. Why should we care about retaining referrers? I think the only reason that people dislike the idea of losing them, is because they've got used to them being there. I don't particularly like the fact that sites which I click through to can see where I'm coming from, or what I was searching for, so I've installed a…

> If HTTP referrers never existed, the web would still be huge and would still be full of amazing content. While we're at it, let's get rid of User-Agent. No sarcasm intended, I'm serious. It only does bad things.

I disagree - it's nice to be able to serve a mobile layout to a mobile device. If I'm trying to load, say, CNN or ESPN on an older mobile phone, I don't need all the cruft that comes with the desktop version.

(We can get into all the evils suggested by http://xkcd.com/869/ , but for the purposes of this argument I'm assuming that web developers and sysadmins are competent and not evil.)

Re: Should All Web Traffic Be Encrypted?

#120
post #55

One item that this (excellent) blog post does not adress is what to do about referer information which is generally not passed along when clicking on links on sites being browsed over SSL. In order to "get credit" for all of the traffic that they send everywhere twitter had to develop a fairly elaborate system of redirections (built into t.co) to make sure that clicks from twitter.com ended up being sent out to the r…

When going from https to https site, referer information is usually being sent, at least with modern browsers. So if the whole web goes encrypted (yay), the issue is solved.

Really? That's....very strange. The rules for this sort of thing seem so arbitrary.
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