Firefox Forces Secure HTTPS Connections for Some Domains
Mozilla announced that current Firefox Beta versions now come with a feature that forces HTTPS connections to certain sites via HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security).
While HSTS has been supported since Firefox 4, Mozilla is now following Google's lead to implement a preloaded list of websites that are contacted using HTTPS by default:
"Our preload list has been seeded with entries from Chrome’s list of a similar function," wrote Mozilla's David Keeler in a blog post. "To build our preload list, a request is sent to every host. Only if a host responds with a valid HSTS header with an appropriately large max-age value (currently 10886400, which is eighteen weeks) do we include it in our list. We also see if the includeSubdomains value for the entry on Chrome’s list is the same as what we receive in the response header (if they do not match, we use the one we receive)."
The approach is designed to mitigate a potential vulnerability that would allow an attacker to prevent a browser from securely connecting to a site via HSTS. With forced HSTS, the browser will never connect to an included website via an insecure (HTTP) protocol.
Users of Google Chrome can go a step further and control individual sites via the interface at chrome://net-internals/#hsts, which enables users to add or delete HSTS websites.
The current Firefox Beta can be downloaded here.
Maybe one method is trial-by-fire:
Visit known infected websites, and see how many infections the computers pick up.
Cause I tested going to msn using IE and it didn't require that I sign in..
Edit: Sorry.. I just noticed this new feature is in the Beta only, which I am not using. So my firefox/msn issue stems from something else.. grrr..
To Waterfox users (and me): Well, let's just wait for the version update.
Extension*.
Firefox's devs seem to be slowly waking up though. They're even addressing the UI lag issues (gasp!)
Can you really blame them for trying to work around poorly-coded websites that violate standards and sub-par 3rd party plugins?
I don't know about you, but I use HTTPS to stop my ISP from spying on me. I don't care whether a website is secure or not, I just care that my ISP can't track what I look at on said site. I couldn't give a stuff about banking sites. I do my banking IRL, not online.