• Https Everywhere Firefox Preview
• Https Everywhere Firefox Review
• Https Everywhere On Firefox

HTTPS Everywhere was created back when major sites were still starting to migrate to HTTPS, and it relies on a manually edited whitelist to upgrade connections. The new Firefox option will upgrade everything, and you can disable redirections for the few sites that still don't work properly with HTTPS.

• Firefox 40.0.2 & HTTPS Everywhere - posted in Encryption Methods and Programs: HTTPS Everywhere Does any one know why Mozilla cannot verify the add-on and urge precautions on using it?
• HTTPS Everywhere upgrades your insecure web requests to HTTPS on many thousands of sites, and this means that Firefox on Android with HTTPS Everywhere is now by far the most secure browser against dragnet surveillance attacks like those performed by the NSA, GCHQ, and other intelligence agencies.

To S or not to S, that is the question; the S in HTTP vs HTTPS, that is. HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. It is the English of the Internet (or Internets, depending on who you are talking to). HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure; it takes HTTP and applies asymmetric encryption methodologies to create secure connections. HTTP is used by all websites. In addition to HTTP, many websites – typically websites that have logins or eCommerce related activities – support HTTPS. (dotTech does not support HTTPS at this time.)

The issue with HTTP, of course, is that it isn’t “secure”. People with the the right access and knowledge could potentially read your Internet traffic. HTTPS, on the other hand, uses asymmetric encryption ensuring no one can packet snoop your bank balance away. However, HTTPS isn’t all smiles. HTTPS may be more secure than HTTP, but that security comes at a cost: It takes more money, resources, and time to build and operate HTTPS websites than it does HTTP websites. (As an analogy, think about the differences between open a Word document and opening a Word document encrypted with AxCrypt.)

In light of recent technological advantages (i.e. increased processing capacity, cheaper tech, etc.) and increased fraud, in recent years there has been a push for websites to give preference to HTTPS. HTTPS Everywhere is an addon for Firefox that puts you one step closer to HTTPS heaven.

What Is HTTPS Everywhere

HTTPS Everywhere is an addon jointly developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Tor Project. Simply put, HTTPS Everywhere forces websites to use HTTPS, when applicable.

How It Works

HTTPS Everywhere seamlessly redirects HTTP requests to HTTPS. For example, after installing HTTPS Everywhere, going to http://google.com results in you being sent to https://encrypted.google.com instead. This redirection works when you manually visit a website (i.e. type it in the URL bar) or if you click on a link to a website (i.e. clicking on a link located in a dotTech article).

HTTPS Not-so-everywhere

It should be noted HTTPS Everywhere does not work for *all* websites.

Firstly, HTTPS Everywhere is rule-based. It has a database that contains a list of websites; each website has a rule associated with it telling Firefox what to do when the HTTP version of the website is visited. When these websites are visited via HTTP, users are automatically sent to the HTTPS version based upon what the rule states. HTTPS Everywhere only works for websites that it has rules created for. Don’t fret, though: HTTPS Everywhere comes with rules for hundreds of websites (thousands?)…

…and users have the ability to add their own custom rules.

Secondly, not all websites support HTTPS. HTTPS is strictly a server-based protocol in the sense that system/website admins have to setup websites to use HTTPS — it isn’t something you can activate on the user’s end. In the words of the EFF, “HTTPS Everywhere depends entirely on the security features of the individual web sites that you use; it activates those security features, but it can’t create them if they don’t already exist.”

Ahhhhh websites won’t load properly

The HTTPS version of a website may be different than the HTTP version of a website. For example, http://livejournal.com is different than https://livejournal.com; or https://encrypted.google.com does not contain the links to Google services in the Google bar located at the top whereas http://google.com does. The different between HTTP and HTTPS versions of websites is out of HTTPS Everywhere’s control. Website admins control how their websites behave, look, and feel. HTTPS Everywhere cannot change websites.

If you find the HTTPS version of a website to be undesirable and would like to go back to the HTTP version, you can disable HTTPS Everywhere for the particular website by clicking on the HTTPS Everywhere icon and disabling HTTPS for that particular website:

HTTPS does not always mean secure

Ever notice the broken lock in your browser bar? The broken lock shows up when you are on an HTTPS page but the HTTPS page has some HTTP content (i.e. unsecure connections) embedded in it. (An example of this is how the HTTPS version of Wikipedia pulls images from WikiMedia.org which has no HTTPS version.) HTTPS Everywhere cannot protect against this. As I mentioned earlier, HTTPS Everywhere cannot change websites. If an HTTPS webpage contains unsecure content, HTTPS Everywhere will not be able to magically turn the unsecure content into secure content. So a broken lock will still be a broken lock. Be aware of this.

Final Words and Download Link

I am sitting on the fence in regards to the need of using HTTPS for every website. I am not sure the lack of content (i.e. websites that have different HTTPS versions than HTTP versions) and the extra drain on bandwidth and computing resources is worth it to secure my Google search results. I understand the need to use HTTPS for logins or eCommerce or any other type of form input, but for just surfing the web? Iunno, I am still not convinced. However, for those that do desire it, HTTPS Everywhere is not a perfect solution but it is better than what you have right now: Nothing. You can grab HTTPS Everywhere from the links below. (HTTPS Everywhere is not available in Mozilla’s Firefox addons repository because EFF does not agree with Mozilla’s privacy policy. You must download HTTPS Everywhere from EFF’s website.)

HTTPS Everywhere is a free and open-sourcebrowser extension for Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi and Firefox for Android, which is developed collaboratively by The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).^[4] It automatically makes websites use a more secure HTTPS connection instead of HTTP, if they support it.^[5] The option 'Encrypt All Sites Eligible' makes it possible to block and unblock all non-HTTPS browser connections with one click.^[6]

Development[edit]

HTTPS Everywhere was inspired by Google's increased use of HTTPS^[7] and is designed to force the usage of HTTPS automatically whenever possible.^[8] The code, in part, is based on NoScript's HTTP Strict Transport Security implementation, but HTTPS Everywhere is intended to be simpler to use than NoScript's force HTTPS functionality which requires the user to manually add websites to a list.^[4] The EFF provides information for users on how to add HTTPS rulesets to HTTPS Everywhere,^[9] and information on which websites support HTTPS.^[10]

Platform support[edit]

A public beta of HTTPS Everywhere for Firefox was released in 2010,^[11] and version 1.0 was released in 2011.^[12] A beta for Chrome was released in February 2012.^[13] In 2014, a version was released for Android phones.^[14]

SSL Observatory[edit]

The SSL Observatory is a feature in HTTPS Everywhere introduced in version 2.0.1^[13] which analyzes public key certificates to determine if certificate authorities have been compromised,^[15] and if the user is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.^[16] In 2013, the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) noted that the data set used by the SSL Observatory often treated intermediate authorities as different entities, thus inflating the number of certificate authorities. The SSAC criticized SSL Observatory for potentially significantly undercounting internal name certificates, and noted that it used a data set from 2010.^[17]

Https Everywhere Firefox Preview

Continual Ruleset Updates[edit]

The update to Version 2018.4.3, shipped 3 April 2018, introduces the 'Continual Ruleset Updates' function.^[18] To apply up-to-date https-rules, this update function executes one rule-matching within 24 hours. A website called https-rulesets was built by the EFF for this purpose. This automated update function can be disabled in the add-on settings. Prior the update- mechanism there have been ruleset-updates only through app-updates. Even after this feature was implemented there are still bundled rulesets shipped within app-updates.

Reception[edit]

Two studies have recommended building in HTTPS Everywhere functionality into Android browsers.^[19][20] In 2012, Eric Phetteplace described it as 'perhaps the best response to Firesheep-style attacks available for any platform'.^[21] In 2011, Vincent Toubiana and Vincent Verdot pointed out some drawbacks of the HTTPS Everywhere add-on, including that the list of services which support HTTPS needs maintaining, and that some services are redirected to HTTPS even though they are not yet available in HTTPS, not allowing the user of the extension to get to the service.^[22]Other criticisms are that users may be misled to believe that if HTTPS Everywhere does not switch a site to HTTPS, it is because it does not have an HTTPS version, while it could be that the site manager has not submitted an HTTPS ruleset to the EFF,^[23]and that because the extension sends information about the sites the user visits to the SSL Observatory, this could be used to track the user.^[23]

Legacy[edit]

HTTPS Everywhere initiative inspired opportunistic encryption alternatives :

• 2020: Firefox builtin HTTPS Only Mode.^[24][25]
• 2019: HTTPZ^[26] for Firefox / WebExt supporting browsers.
• 2017: Smart-HTTPS (closed-source early since v0.2^[27]),

See also[edit]

• Brave - An open-source browser that integrates HTTPS Everywhere
• Transport Layer Security (TLS) – Cryptographic protocols that provide communications security over a computer network.
• Privacy Badger – A free browser extension created by the EFF that blocks advertisements and tracking cookies.
• Switzerland (software) – An open-source network monitoring utility developed by the EFF to monitor network traffic.
• Let's Encrypt – A free automated X.509 certificate authority designed to simplify the setup and maintenance of TLS encrypted secure websites.
• HTTP Strict Transport Security – A web security policy mechanism which helps to protect websites against protocol downgrade attacks and cookie hijacking.

References[edit]

Https Everywhere Firefox Review

1. ^'Changelog.txt'. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 27 June 2019.
2. ^'Releases · EFForg/https-everywhere'. GitHub. Retrieved 16 June 2018.
3. ^HTTPS Everywhere Development Electronic Frontier Foundation
4. ^ ^ab'HTTPS Everywhere'. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 14 April 2014.
5. ^'HTTPS Everywhere reaches 2.0, comes to Chrome as beta'. H-online.com. 29 February 2012. Retrieved 14 April 2014.
6. ^'HTTPS Everywhere Changelog'.
7. ^'Automatic web encryption (almost) everywhere - The H Open Source: News and Features'. H-online.com. 18 June 2010. Archived from the original on 23 June 2010. Retrieved 15 April 2014.
8. ^Murphy, Kate (16 February 2011). 'New Hacking Tools Pose Bigger Threats to Wi-Fi Users'. The New York Times.
9. ^'HTTPS Everywhere Rulesets'. Electronic Frontier Foundation. 24 January 2014. Retrieved 19 May 2014.
10. ^'HTTPS Everywhere Atlas'. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 24 May 2014.
11. ^Mills, Elinor (18 June 2010). 'Firefox add-on encrypts sessions with Facebook, Twitter'. CNET. Retrieved 14 April 2014.
12. ^Gilbertson, Scott (5 August 2011). 'Firefox Security Tool HTTPS Everywhere Hits 1.0'. Wired. Retrieved 14 April 2014.
13. ^ ^abEckersley, Peter (29 February 2012). 'HTTPS Everywhere & the Decentralized SSL Observatory'. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 4 June 2014.
14. ^Brian, Matt (27 January 2014). 'Browsing on your Android phone just got safer, thanks to the EFF'. Engadget. Retrieved 14 April 2014.
15. ^Lemos, Robert (21 September 2011). 'EFF builds system to warn of certificate breaches'. InfoWorld. Retrieved 14 April 2014.
16. ^Vaughan, Steven J. (28 February 2012). 'New 'HTTPS Everywhere' Web browser extension released'. ZDNet. Retrieved 14 April 2014.
17. ^'1 SSAC Advisory on Internal Name Certificates'(PDF). ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC). 15 March 2013.
18. ^Abrams, Lawrence (5 April 2018). 'HTTPS Everywhere Now Delivers New Rulesets Without Upgrading Extension'. BleepingComputer.
19. ^Fahl, Sascha; et al. 'Why Eve and Mallory love Android: An analysis of Android SSL (in)security'(PDF). Proceedings of the 2012 ACM conference on Computer and communications security. ACM, 2012. Archived from the original(PDF) on 8 January 2013.
20. ^Davis, Benjamin; Chen, Hao (June 2013). 'Retro Skeleton'. Proceedings of the 11th annual international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services - Mobi Sys '13. pp. 181–192. doi:10.1145/2462456.2464462. ISBN9781450316729.
21. ^Kern, M. Kathleen, and Eric Phetteplace. 'Hardening the browser.' Reference & User Services Quarterly 51.3 (2012): 210-214. http://eprints.rclis.org/16837/
22. ^Toubiana, Vincent; Verdot, Vincent (2011). 'Show Me Your Cookie And I Will Tell You Who You Are'. arXiv:1108.5864 [cs.CR].
23. ^ ^ab'Time to stop recommending HTTPS Everywhere? : privacytoolsIO'.
24. ^Kerschbaumer, Christoph; Gaibler, Julian; Edelstein, Arthur; Merwe, Thyla van der. 'Firefox 83 introduces HTTPS-Only Mode'. Mozilla Security Blog. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
25. ^'HTTPS Everywhere FAQ'. Electronic Frontier Foundation. 7 November 2016. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
26. ^claustromaniac (10 October 2020), claustromaniac/httpz, retrieved 3 December 2020
27. ^'Smart HTTPS (revived) repository · Issue #12 · ilGur1132/Smart-HTTPS'. GitHub. Retrieved 3 December 2020.

Https Everywhere On Firefox