With more threats to our privacy and security online than ever, companies like Google have been pressuring web developers to start taking security more seriously. Now it looks like Mozilla is stepping in as well, and has announced its intention to start favoring HTTPS websites over unsecured HTTP websites.
If Mozilla gets its way, the internet will soon be torn in two. One web will have full functionality and be delivered over HTTPS; and the other, non-secure web, will slowly decrease in its usefulness. However, Mozilla will not be able to achieve this state of affairs on its own, and said it will be taking its ideas to the W3C WebAppSec Working Group. “Since the goal of this effort is to send a message to the web developer community that they need to be secure, our work here will be most effective if coordinated across the web community,” said Firefox security lead Richard Barnes in a blog post. According to Barnes, Mozilla’s plan is to set a date after which new features are only available to HTTPS sites, and then gradually phase out browser features for HTTP sites. “For example, one definition of ‘new’ could be ‘features that cannot be polyfilled’,” Barnes said.
