this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Chromium Blog: Towards HTTPS by default (blog.chromium.org)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3301227

Chrome will be experimenting with defaulting to https:// if the site supports it, even when an http:// link is used and will warn about downloads from insecure sources for "high-risk files" (example given is an exe). They're also planning on enabling it by default for Incognito Mode and "sites that Chrome knows you typically access over HTTPS".

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[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I disagree. While in practice, this is often the same website, it is a different protocol and a different port. It just happens to use the same DNS address. You're explicitly giving your browser a FQDN, and it is ignoring it and doing something else.

I hope this feature can be disabled. Google has been ignoring the W3C and has shipped proprietary, insecure features in their chromium engine for a while now, so it wouldn't surprise me if they made it permanent ๐Ÿคท

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What kind of monster would deliberately serve different content for http and https versions of the same URL?

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree. That would be absurd.

However, I don't like not having the option of using HTTP if I want to use it. It's okay if the webserver redirects me, but I don't like if my browser does it when I didn't tell it to. I might want this when doing development, port tunneling, VPN stuff, etc. In most cases, it won't matter, but when it does, it will be a pain in the ass.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Imagine you want to test your redirect from 80 to 443 when setting up your webserver.

While I think for the normal user this enhances security by defaulting to HTTPS, however this makes no sense for a browser. This should be enforced server side, the browser is for browsing, i.e. viewing. Not controlling and competing with the server software for competency.

Chromium is really leaning into bad code practice with the disregard for "separation of concerns".

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

If it's enforced server-side, then there's still an initial connection that is unsecured and can potentially be intercepted/modified before it gets to the redirect from 80 to 443.

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I have, and for quite some time when I was trying to set Https up.

It's really bad IMO to "decide what the user wants" even if this is both discussable and a very small step, it is a step towards that.