Advanced

HTTPS Everywhere - no substitute for common sense

Posted by mcasperson on · 1 comment
Brighthub; By Matthew Casperson
Mail this story
Print this story

HTTPS Everywhere is an initiative by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that boosts the security of Firefox with a clever plugin that will automatically encrypt your communications with a number of web services that support HTTPS. This provides an automated way to move users from the insecure HTTP protocol, which is the default for many web sites (like Google and Facebook), even though they may also support HTTPS. I personally applaud the initiative on a technical level, and if I was a Firefox user, I would install the extension in a heart beat. But, on a fundamental level, the extension will fail to make any real improvement in the security of the web for one simple reason – users are the biggest weakness in any security system, and there is no patch for users.

Full Story

  Nav
» Read more about: Story Type: Editorial; Groups: Mozilla

» Get new stories by e-mail: nightly or as they are published

« Return to the newswire homepage

  Related stories
» More like this

Comments (1)

However.... It's when something goes popular that the masses start going for it. And the fact newer extensions come along that give the informed user real leverage helps to.. enter: http://convergence.io

"instead of a CA there is a notary server that allows for trust agility. Privacy is achieved via local caching on the browser side, so the second time the users talks to an SSL site, if the SSL certificate is the same, there will be no need to check with a notary." - http://www.esecurityplanet.com/news/article.php/3938211/Who-...

It's just sad that people keep diving into firefox to build extensions for.. I'm using Midori devs! ssl-everywhere, convergence, etc.. Midori!!!

Post a comment

A free account is needed to post. Write your comment here first: your text is kept in this browser while you sign up or log in, and is waiting for you when you come back.

Your message:
|||||
10
Markdown: **bold**, *italic*, [text](https://link), - lists, > quotes, $x^2$ for math. Formatting help

Sign up and post (it is free)  or  Log in and post