HTTP/2 changes the meaning of the http:// scheme. All connections will now be TLS-encrypted. (Edit: Maybe not. See hobohacker below.) http:// means that the endpoint has not been verified using the CA system and is using a self-signed certificate (and is thus trivially vulnerable to a MITM should certificate keys not be checked out-of-band).
The purpose is to provide confidentiality to the vast majority of traffic, even if the authentication part of the CIA triangle isn't achieved. This proposal's purpose is to undo that and expose all traffic using the http:// scheme to your ISP, exactly as it is today. (I would also note that this draft is proposed by AT&T, which is now rolling out new plans in Austin that charge an extra $30/month if you do NOT agree to them inspecting and data-mining all of your internet activity and selling it to advertisers.)
This proposal's purpose is to ... expose all traffic using the http:// scheme to your ISP, exactly as it is today.
Isn't that a semantic requirement of HTTP, though? Half of the "tech" in the HTTP/1.X spec is to allow for caching of resources and responses by proxies, allowing anyone between the client and server (e.g. your ISP) to act as a CDN.
HTTPS/1.X effectively throws that away by doing end-to-end encryption. It's a trade-off: we gain the surety that all the responses are coming directly from the peer, rather than anyone else... but the web becomes 90% less cacheable, because the only places things can end up cached are between the client and the HTTPS pipe (i.e. the browser cache), or between the HTTPS pipe and the server (i.e. "reverse proxies" like Nginx.)
The current workaround for this, when you need caching for your Big Traffic on either ingress or egress, is to do what amounts to purposeful self-MITMing of your HTTPS session: to terminate HTTPS on a caching proxy, that holds the certificate of your client/server, and acts as if it were you, while itself doing another HTTPS session for "the last mile" to connect to you. This is what companies do when they deploy their own CA-cert to their networks, so everyone's access can be proxied through their own system; and this is what services like Cloudflare do when they sit "in front of" your server while not being a part of your company's VPN at all.
Basically, HTTP2 codifies this workaround, and calls it HTTP.
I don't see why you think this is a semantic requirement of HTTP. Perhaps there's some confusion over what HTTP semantics are. Let me refer you to http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-2.... It doesn't discuss exposing all HTTP traffic to network intermediaries. Perhaps you're thinking of the HTTP messaging layer http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging-2.... Also, I think your statement about allowing an in-path intermediary to act as a CDN is weird, since a CDN is defined as "a large distributed system of servers deployed in multiple data centers across the Internet. The goal of a CDN is to serve content to end-users with high availability and high performance." [1].
It's true, HTTPS is full of tradeoffs. You've identified some of them.
What do you see in HTTP/2 that "codifies this workaround"? That wasn't immediately obvious to me. Recall that HTTP/2 is basically just multiplexing with prioritized streams. There's no requirement on TLS in the spec, although all current browser deployments (of SPDY) require TLS.
I find it difficult to imagine a world where Applications agnostic caching for encrypted sessions is possible.
I fully expect a world where application developers have services at their disposal for positioning assets closer to the end user with VM instance level isolation and security guarantees.
Transport level security is not likely to be enough for high value/sensitivity data in the long run but adding a bunch of new trusted parties to the system is going to be huge enabler for end user surveillance.
Why application-agnostic? HTTP's own caching isn't application-agnostic; it relies on the server to specify Cache-Control headers.
I would imagine an ideal HTTP2 caching protocol to basically specify that some resources can come from anywhere, as long as the retrieved result conforms to an attached content hash—while also specifying a primary source to get the resource from, if you don't have a DHT handy. (Oddly enough, this is basically a suggestion that web browsers try to resolve magnet: URNs.)
Thanks for this correction; I was under the impression that opportunistic encryption had already been chosen based on HTTP/2 descending from SPDY, but I clearly am not following the WG all that closely.
Is a fair reading of your blog post that it has a high likelihood of succeeding?
Only time will tell. It's all still in progress. Of all the major browser vendors (Firefox, Chromium, IE) present at the Zurich HTTP/2 interim meeting, only Patrick McManus (Firefox) has expressed interest. Notably, he's a co-editor of that Alternate-Services internet-draft.
http:// means that the endpoint has not been verified using the CA system and is using a self-signed certificate (and is thus trivially vulnerable to a MITM should certificate keys not be independently checked).
Right. I understand that. The lack of certificate verification for the http scheme means that ISPs can MITM HTTP traffic with or without this proposal, just like they can with HTTP/1.1.
So how does this proposal make things worse?
new plans in Austin that charge an extra $30/month if you do NOT agree to them inspecting and data-mining all of your web browsing and selling it to advertisers
Really? That's a special kind of evil and should be illegal.
Really? That's a special kind of evil and should be illegal.
Nah, no need to make it illegal. He's referring to AT&T's "GigaPower" gigabit service in Austin... the same service that's available from 2 other providers for the same, or cheaper, as what AT&T's charging for their data-mined bullshit.
AT&T will have a fun time getting customers when Google and Grande point that out in their attack ads. :D
Frankly, I would be surprised if this was not in Google's ToS from the start, considering that Google's core business model is mining of big data. I suspect there wouldn't be an option to turn it off, not even by paying extra.
One other provider. Neither Google (1 Gbps, "by mid 2014") nor Time Warner (300 Mbps, "by the fall of 2014") is yet offering comparable service. Only AT&T and Grande have any actual ultra-high-speed customers at this time.
The lack of certificate verification for the http scheme means that ISPs can MITM HTTP traffic with or without this proposal, just like they can with HTTP/1.1.
Can they really? At least some of those connections should have the certificates verified out of band, so I'd imagine they would get caught fairly quickly. And then loudly accused of conspiring with the CAs (to stifle competition) or the NSA (to steal your data), or the competitors of whatever site/product was being used, or someone I haven't thought of.
It's part of GigaPower (their 300Mbps, soon-to-be 1Gbps FTTH service they rolled out quickly after the Google Fiber announcement). AT&T does a good job of obscuring it on their website[0], but if you click "See offer details", you'll find that the $70/month price is a "special" that requires you opting in to "AT&T Internet Preferences", which is their euphemism for DPI. It's not explained there, but if you opt out, you lose the "special" and your price goes to $99/month.
From just a random googling, here's the first news article I found detailing the plan.[1] (See the last three paragraphs.)
Comments
HTTP/2 changes the meaning of the http:// scheme. All connections will now be TLS-encrypted. (Edit: Maybe not. See hobohacker below.) http:// means that the endpoint has not been verified using the CA system and is using a self-signed certificate (and is thus trivially vulnerable to a MITM should certificate keys not be checked out-of-band).
The purpose is to provide confidentiality to the vast majority of traffic, even if the authentication part of the CIA triangle isn't achieved. This proposal's purpose is to undo that and expose all traffic using the http:// scheme to your ISP, exactly as it is today. (I would also note that this draft is proposed by AT&T, which is now rolling out new plans in Austin that charge an extra $30/month if you do NOT agree to them inspecting and data-mining all of your internet activity and selling it to advertisers.)
Isn't that a semantic requirement of HTTP, though? Half of the "tech" in the HTTP/1.X spec is to allow for caching of resources and responses by proxies, allowing anyone between the client and server (e.g. your ISP) to act as a CDN.
HTTPS/1.X effectively throws that away by doing end-to-end encryption. It's a trade-off: we gain the surety that all the responses are coming directly from the peer, rather than anyone else... but the web becomes 90% less cacheable, because the only places things can end up cached are between the client and the HTTPS pipe (i.e. the browser cache), or between the HTTPS pipe and the server (i.e. "reverse proxies" like Nginx.)
The current workaround for this, when you need caching for your Big Traffic on either ingress or egress, is to do what amounts to purposeful self-MITMing of your HTTPS session: to terminate HTTPS on a caching proxy, that holds the certificate of your client/server, and acts as if it were you, while itself doing another HTTPS session for "the last mile" to connect to you. This is what companies do when they deploy their own CA-cert to their networks, so everyone's access can be proxied through their own system; and this is what services like Cloudflare do when they sit "in front of" your server while not being a part of your company's VPN at all.
Basically, HTTP2 codifies this workaround, and calls it HTTP.
I don't see why you think this is a semantic requirement of HTTP. Perhaps there's some confusion over what HTTP semantics are. Let me refer you to http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-2.... It doesn't discuss exposing all HTTP traffic to network intermediaries. Perhaps you're thinking of the HTTP messaging layer http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging-2.... Also, I think your statement about allowing an in-path intermediary to act as a CDN is weird, since a CDN is defined as "a large distributed system of servers deployed in multiple data centers across the Internet. The goal of a CDN is to serve content to end-users with high availability and high performance." [1].
It's true, HTTPS is full of tradeoffs. You've identified some of them.
What do you see in HTTP/2 that "codifies this workaround"? That wasn't immediately obvious to me. Recall that HTTP/2 is basically just multiplexing with prioritized streams. There's no requirement on TLS in the spec, although all current browser deployments (of SPDY) require TLS.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network
I find it difficult to imagine a world where Applications agnostic caching for encrypted sessions is possible.
I fully expect a world where application developers have services at their disposal for positioning assets closer to the end user with VM instance level isolation and security guarantees.
Transport level security is not likely to be enough for high value/sensitivity data in the long run but adding a bunch of new trusted parties to the system is going to be huge enabler for end user surveillance.
Why application-agnostic? HTTP's own caching isn't application-agnostic; it relies on the server to specify Cache-Control headers.
I would imagine an ideal HTTP2 caching protocol to basically specify that some resources can come from anywhere, as long as the retrieved result conforms to an attached content hash—while also specifying a primary source to get the resource from, if you don't have a DHT handy. (Oddly enough, this is basically a suggestion that web browsers try to resolve magnet: URNs.)
HTTP/2 does not change the meaning of http://. That's the opportunistic encryption proposal: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-httpbis-alt-svc-.... For more information, you can see https://insouciant.org/tech/http-slash-2-considerations-and-....
Thanks for this correction; I was under the impression that opportunistic encryption had already been chosen based on HTTP/2 descending from SPDY, but I clearly am not following the WG all that closely.
Is a fair reading of your blog post that it has a high likelihood of succeeding?
Only time will tell. It's all still in progress. Of all the major browser vendors (Firefox, Chromium, IE) present at the Zurich HTTP/2 interim meeting, only Patrick McManus (Firefox) has expressed interest. Notably, he's a co-editor of that Alternate-Services internet-draft.
Right. I understand that. The lack of certificate verification for the http scheme means that ISPs can MITM HTTP traffic with or without this proposal, just like they can with HTTP/1.1.
So how does this proposal make things worse?
Really? That's a special kind of evil and should be illegal.
Nah, no need to make it illegal. He's referring to AT&T's "GigaPower" gigabit service in Austin... the same service that's available from 2 other providers for the same, or cheaper, as what AT&T's charging for their data-mined bullshit.
AT&T will have a fun time getting customers when Google and Grande point that out in their attack ads. :D
Unless Grande and Google eventually decide to do the same thing. Why not, from their perspective?
Frankly, I would be surprised if this was not in Google's ToS from the start, considering that Google's core business model is mining of big data. I suspect there wouldn't be an option to turn it off, not even by paying extra.
Google doesn't need to, your encrypted traffic is to their servers.
One other provider. Neither Google (1 Gbps, "by mid 2014") nor Time Warner (300 Mbps, "by the fall of 2014") is yet offering comparable service. Only AT&T and Grande have any actual ultra-high-speed customers at this time.
The lack of certificate verification for the http scheme means that ISPs can MITM HTTP traffic with or without this proposal, just like they can with HTTP/1.1.
Can they really? At least some of those connections should have the certificates verified out of band, so I'd imagine they would get caught fairly quickly. And then loudly accused of conspiring with the CAs (to stifle competition) or the NSA (to steal your data), or the competitors of whatever site/product was being used, or someone I haven't thought of.
Can you elaborate on those AT&T plans?
It's part of GigaPower (their 300Mbps, soon-to-be 1Gbps FTTH service they rolled out quickly after the Google Fiber announcement). AT&T does a good job of obscuring it on their website[0], but if you click "See offer details", you'll find that the $70/month price is a "special" that requires you opting in to "AT&T Internet Preferences", which is their euphemism for DPI. It's not explained there, but if you opt out, you lose the "special" and your price goes to $99/month.
From just a random googling, here's the first news article I found detailing the plan.[1] (See the last three paragraphs.)
[0]: http://att.com/gigapower
[1]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57615246-94/at-t-delivers-g...
I pay AT&T about half that no-DPI price for 12mbit. I wouldn't sweat paying the extra to avoid DPI if I wanted the service.
The point isn't whether one can afford it, but whether it's right.
I agree. But that sad situation looks good from where I'm standing.