Mandatory HTTP 2.0 encryption proposal sparks hot debate
Most Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) debates pass unnoticed, because they're very dry and detailed. However, a suggestion that the HTTP 2.0 specification might mandate encryption – in a post-Snowden world – is too tasty an idea to go under the radar.
The suggestion sparking the debate came from HTTPbis chair, Mark Nottingham, who put forward a discussion summary in which he suggested some kind of consensus is emerging that HTTP 2.0 should favour https:// to protect users (to some degree) against traffic snooping: “HTTP/2 to only be used with https:// URIs on the "open" Internet. http:// URIs would continue to use HTTP/1 (and of course it would still be possible for older HTTP/1 clients to still interoperate with https:// URIs)”, Nottingham wrote on the IETF HTTP working group list.
Other options he reported from the IETF Vancouver meeting were to use opportunistic encryption for http:// URIs without authenticating the server; or to add server authentication to the opportunistic encryption suggestion.
