Firefox Prepares To Mark All HTTP Sites 'Not Secure' After HTTPS Adoption Rises (bleepingcomputer.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: The increased adoption of HTTPS among website operators will soon lead to browsers marking HTTP pages as "Not Secure" by default, and Mozilla is taking the first steps. The current Firefox Nightly Edition (version 59) includes a secret configuration option that when activated will show a visible visual indicator that the current page is not secure. In its current form, this visual indicator is a red line striking through a classic lock that's normally used to signal the presence of encrypted HTTPS pages. According to Let's Encrypt, 67% of web pages loaded by Firefox in November 2017 used HTTPS, compared to only 45% at the end of last year.

Comments

Servers on your LAN are probably Not Secure

[tepples]

HTTPS requires a certificate, and a certificate that requires a fully qualified domain name. The CA/Browser Forum's Baseline Requirements forbid issuing certificates in RFC 1918 private networks (such as 10/8 and 192.168/16) or the mDNS reserved domain (.local). This means everything on the average user's local area network will end up marked "Not Secure", such as the administration interface of the user's router, printer, or network attached storage (NAS) device.

The document "Deprecating Non-Secure HTTP" states that Mozilla is aware of this problem but fails to offer a solution:

Q. What about my home router? Or my printer?

The challenge here is not that these machines can’t do HTTPS, it’s that they’re not provisioned with a certificate. A lot of times, this is because the device doesn’t have a globally unique name, so it can’t be issued a certificate in the same way that a web site can. There is a legitimate need for better technology in this space, and we’re talking to some device vendors about how to improve the situation.

It should also be noted, though, that the gradual nature of our plan means that we have some time to work on this. As noted above, everything that works today will continue to work for a while, so we have some time to solve this problem.

If the signature itself is tampered with

[tepples]

Let's say I'm downloading a file that's several GB, like a disk image. When I download it, I'll verify the signature.

How can you be sure that the SHA-256 value against which you are verifying the disk image hasn't itself been tampered with on its way to your device?

Encrypting the entire download is a waste of resources for both the server and client.

No it isn't. If you fail to encrypt, your ISP, your ISP's ISP, and any snooping government can tell conclusively what you have downloaded. If you do encrypt, the eavesdropper can see only what domain you're accessing and the sizes of what you download. You can obfuscate even the sizes by using range requests to pull the 4 GB disk image a 4 MB chunk at a time.

Plus, hosting providers often charge extra fees for https

Then take your business elsewhere. Switch from a hosting provider that charges extra for HTTPS to a competing hosting provider that does not charge extra for HTTPS.

Re:If the signature itself is tampered with

[hairyfeet]

Insightful? Really mods? Lets take a site like Megofan...all it has is scans of old Mego adverts and interviews with the guys that worked there. No sign in, no information from the user at all, just some static images and text....now WHY IN THE FUCK does this need to be encrypted? Anybody? Beuller?

You want to make the web safe? KILL JAVASCRIPT DEAD and while you are at it BAN accepting code from third parties like these sleazy as fuck advert companies...tada! Web is safe as in your mama's arms...oh but that would mean website owners might have to get off their overfed asses, wipe the Cheetos dust off their fingers and actually VET THEIR ADS instead of just bitching and whining when we block them! Can't have that, nope so lets make every site in the free world including those that are nothing but text and jpegs encrypt for...not a damned reason other than SECURITY THEATER.

This is a classic example of the "we have to DO SOMETHING!" bullshit, a variation of the "think of the children!" kind of thinking...does it solve the REAL problem, which is our devices spying on us, malware filled adverts, or any of the real nasty things we've been dealing with? Nope. But hey it lets CA vendors make more money while putting on the appearance of giving a fuck and that is just as good in these days of hastag "our hearts are with" insert name of city...right?

Re:How to Disable it

[vlueboy]

The rest of us can simply disable "security.insecure_connection_icon.enabled" in about:config.

Oh?
Just like Firefox's extensions fiasco where some similar about:hack "allowed" your unapproved extensions to continue running if it wasn't publicly vetted by the mozilla version of an app store? That respite, like many Firefox moves was killed on v48 a year ago and blew away a Firefox extension that was developed in-house and had no business being available to the world. And just a year earlier? the Chrome and Safari side grenade exploded with a different "security" feature that cost us man hours, training and bug stabilization time. Browserwise, there is nowhere safe of these whims.

When Mozilla is saying the http sites will work "for a while" for local printers / routers, they're taking the haughty tone appropriate for someone saying we'll be allowed to be beggars at their house until they tire of taking pity on us... as if browser makers were paying US for using THEIR products. One reason open source projects aren't taken seriously, mind you, is present in that vacuous statement: unlike closed source companies like MS and Oracle, the statement of EOL comes with no hard dates. That's a red flag right there, considering Firefox has more or less had "courage" in announcing pulling the plug on other features or forcing unwanted garbage as well.

I'm tired after seeing the bleakness of all the bug threads with complaints of business burdens produced by these changes that just keep falling on deaf ears: All browsers do this deprecation game on a whim without any standards emporium behind the stupidity (though sometimes the W3C is part of the problem.) The only winning move is NOT to upgrade, because freedoms imaginaryly lost n% of the time to some unseen enemy in a potential hack are less concrete than the freedom lost right now for 100% of the time in the form of loss of value and features.