oss-sec mailing list archives

Browser Security Tool: HTTPS Only (Why, How, Open Source, Python)


From: David Leo <httpsonly.github.io () gmail com>
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2016 22:07:21 -0500

(@moderators The original post was too brief. This one has details.)

Summary

This tool completely locks browser - just HTTPS, nothing else. This
tool is extremely simple - less than 100 lines of code(Python and
JavaScript).

Why

Firefox Add-on Firesheep Brings Hacking to the Masses
http://www.pcworld.com/article/208727/Firesheep_Brings_Hacking_to_the_Masses.html
"Firesheep is basically a packet sniffer that can analyze all the
unencrypted Web traffic"
(Quite a while ago, it's become a "casual game")

Yes, Mozilla said, "Gradually phasing out access to browser features
for non-secure websites", in April 2015. After more than six months,
they have done nothing useful.

The Chrome team wanted the same stuff:
https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/marking-http-as-non-secure
Again, nothing significant has been achieved yet.

And there is HTTPS Everywhere, with SO MANY rules:
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere/atlas/
It's still able to access HTTP by default, but there is "Block all
HTTP requests". The problem: nothing happens when browser tries HTTP -
there should be warning(it's incorrect behavior) and options(try
HTTPS, Google Cache, etc). People complained, months ago:
https://github.com/EFForg/https-everywhere/issues/1329

How

PAC(Proxy auto-config) is used:
If it's HTTPS, that's fine.
If it's HTTP, user gets warning and options(try HTTPS, Google Cache -
it has HTTPS, etc).
Anything else, it goes to 0.0.0.0

It's a simple tool that does one job, and does it very well.

URLs

https://httpsonly.github.io/
https://github.com/httpsonly/httpsonly

Best Wishes,


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