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rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO

rradina

Member

Will this force the net to HTTPS?

A potential solution is for sites to use HTTPS for ALL of their traffic (including images because that's probably the next target!) This would represent a burden for all but the consumer. I'm reasonably sure my computer doesn't care one bit if the second CPU has to spend a few cycles decrypting an HTTPS web page or image before displaying it.

Wouldn't this really hammer content providers and ISPs though? Don't ISPs use proxy caches to minimize Internet bandwidth and keep requests local? Isn't HTTPS traffic also difficult to compress if they employ compression to minimize bandwidth? Won't providers get hammered by the extra cycles the HTTPS traffic requires? I know there are reverse-proxy appliances that can off-load HTTPS encryption demands but it's still extra infrastructure and cost.

Should we all buy Akmai stock?

If I was an advertiser and I paid to have my banner first, I'd be upset if my banner is suddenly second. If ISPs continue down this road, content providers will be forced to use HTTPS.

Regarding HTTPS, I know it's reasonably secure given the 128bit key length but if it was possible to decrypt and use deep packet inspection on HTTPS traffic, can the ISP do that legally?

For that matter, the more I think about this, how is what they are already doing legal? Why isn't this treated like a telephone conversation? Eves dropping isn't legal without a court order, right? I know 9/11 changed that for foreign calls but this isn't just eves dropping to gather information. Hell, the ISPs and content providers have been doing THAT for YEARS! (That's B.S too but we seem willing to tolerate if we remain anonymous...) This new tactic is almost James Bondish in that the ISP is modifying the content to provide it's own message on top of the original source.

I thought DNS redirection was borderline. In my opinion, this crosses the line.
SuperWISP
join:2007-04-17
Laramie, WY

SuperWISP

Member

If everyone goes to HTTPS, expect the cost of a broadband connection to go up by about 30% and the speed of fetching Web pages to go down. Why? Because HTTPS can't be cached. It's a tremendous waste of bandwidth for anything that does not truly need to be encrypted.