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Chrome 56 will mark HTTP pages with password fields as non-secure

security.googleblog.com

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Re: Chrome 56 will mark HTTP pages with password fields as non-secure

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you have a password field on a http site?

Like every other person who started a forum some years ago or a wordpress blog you mean? Do you think web hosts offer SSL by default? NO they don't. Duh. That's what is annoying in these comments. Everyone seems to shrug like SSL is standard feature nowadays, except is isn't.

Any web host that doesn't offer SSL by default, for free, is offering an inferior product. I worked on my university's web host from 2006-11 and we put a lot of work into making sure people could use HTTPS whenever they wanted, despite technical limitations (mod_vhost_ldap and SNI don't play well together), and that was a volunteer project, well before the current era of free certs.

If this change convinces people not to use commercial web hosts that don't offer SSL, it will have done a good thing for the web.

Re: Chrome 56 will mark HTTP pages with password fields as non-secure

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passwords are NOT by definition sensitive, and this is the sort of absolutist nonsense that I'm complaining about. Passwords are only as sensitive as the data they access.

This is false. Passwords are only as sensitive as all the data they access. Given that it's impossible for you to know what other data the user is protecting with the same password, you must assume all passwords are as sensitive as the most sensitive data a user might reasonably secure with that password. Do I wish things were different, and that everyone on earth used unique passwords for every site? Of course. But…

As someone who runs like a roleplaying site for like ten people (or several of them), I cannot be responsible for other people's bank passwords, nor should I be punished for daring to host websites without the huge added burden of cost of HTTPS.

The notion that every homebrew website is supposed to support HTTPS is also never going to describe reality.

Re: Chrome 56 will mark HTTP pages with password fields as non-secure

#263
post #225
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"insecure", "huge red flag." For a banking site, an e-commerce site, a webmail, sure. Must an aquarium enthusiast forum be resistant to Man-in-the-Middle attacks? What about weak ciphers? Should every site be resistant to offline decryption by a state actor?

Yes. Every website. Because if only the sensitive sites are strongly encrypted, then bad actors and authorities know exactly where to focus their efforts in trying to steal information. When everyone is strongly encrypted, attackers are stretched much more thinly. Besides, it's easy and free these days. Unless, apparently, you use some crappy shared hosting provider. Get a VPS, man! They're cheap!

Hell, even shared hosting like Dreamhost which I use for a number of old projects I host for other people has built in LetsEncrypt functionality. I was setting up a WP blog for a family member the other day and saw the option and it was super easy. I've added to my backlog to go turn it on for all my other sites as soon as I've confirmed it won't break anything (ie. loading assets using absolute urls that use http. But even that is easy with this WP plugin I found that rewrites all url's you list in pages/posts and while it's probably meant for changing the URL of your blog from abc.com to def.com it works flawlessly with going from http://abc.com to https://abc.com).

Re: Chrome 56 will mark HTTP pages with password fields as non-secure

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a security expert, but as I understand it, passwords sent in the clear are vulnerable to being intercepted. Even if users of your site don't have much to worry about from those accounts being compromised (this may or may not be true), lots of people use the same password for more than one login, so their accounts on other sites could be compromised too. That's definitely a significant security risk, even if…

I know I guess I just have to vent some frustration. Time to move on I guess. Does anyone have good hosting suggestions for a web app that has a 1GB database and a few thousand active users? I can only afford ~10-20 EUR a month on shared hosting atm.

Dreamhost is in that price range and has LetsEncrypt built in (it's just a checkbox when configuring the domain). I don't use them for my real projects but it's great for blogs and low traffic sites (a couple thousand users should fair fine I'd think).

Re: Chrome 56 will mark HTTP pages with password fields as non-secure

#266
post #4

Firefox has started to do this recently and it's been fantastically informative and helpful. It's the one new browser feature I never really considered wanting/needing before, that's really stood out to me as being incredibly valuable since I've started to see the warnings pop up.

Kinda like how your antivirus tells you about how the formidable threats it saved your ass from today? Or like "did you know your house COULD have been ransacked today, but it didn't happen!!" Now all my users are going to hear that my site is insecure, when nothing at all changed. How long ago did they announce that? I think just a couple months? They should have announced this much sooner. It's going to hit me hard…

> How long ago did they announce that? I think just a couple months? They should have announced this much sooner.

A year ago.[1]

[1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/tanvi/2016/01/28/no-more-passwords-...

Re: Chrome 56 will mark HTTP pages with password fields as non-secure

#268
post #225
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"insecure", "huge red flag." For a banking site, an e-commerce site, a webmail, sure. Must an aquarium enthusiast forum be resistant to Man-in-the-Middle attacks? What about weak ciphers? Should every site be resistant to offline decryption by a state actor?

Yes. Every website. Because if only the sensitive sites are strongly encrypted, then bad actors and authorities know exactly where to focus their efforts in trying to steal information. When everyone is strongly encrypted, attackers are stretched much more thinly. Besides, it's easy and free these days. Unless, apparently, you use some crappy shared hosting provider. Get a VPS, man! They're cheap!

Wouldn't putting someone (whose server experience level warrants shared hosting) in charge of a VPS create more security issues?

Re: Chrome 56 will mark HTTP pages with password fields as non-secure

#269

What happens if the page is insecure, but the attacker places an iframe in the page with HTTPS url, which then tricks the user into sending their credentials (unsuspecting users will think they are logging into the site).

I'm not sure that really fit what is changing here... If the forum is submitted it's going over https even if the iframe is on an http page. If an attacker has the ability to add code (iframe or other) to your site you've already lost.

Re: Chrome 56 will mark HTTP pages with password fields as non-secure

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's Encrypt is great, but completely useless for... Actually every single website I host. No wildcard certs, the rapid rotation that requires software to renew it regularly, etc. The cost of implementing HTTPS for dozens of sites with no sensitive data is simply not worth it. When companies like Google and Mozilla decided how to handle HTTPS, they decided based on their needs and their perception of everyone else's…

https://certbot.eff.org/ This. This this this. Automates everything so easily. I have helped someone personally deploy HTTPS for over a dozen sites and they all auto-renew without a hitch every 90 days. No Excuses. EFF did us a solid

Except the part where if you're using shared hosting and don't have the ability to run this software on your server, it's useless as I said.
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