1673010 - Outreachy Contribution to HTTPS-Only (ReGina)

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Core :: DOM: Security, task, P4)

Description

[sistersolstice]

Attachment: Screen Shot 2020-10-23 at 9.25.00 AM.png

1613063

Comment 1

[Christoph Kerschbaumer [:ckerschb]]

Your first contribution to HTTPS-Only

HTTPS-Only Mode upgrades every connection from http: to https:. If a web site does not support https:, then Firefox displays an error page. You can test this yourself when following these steps:

• Start Firefox
• Enable HTTPS-Only Mode (Enter about:preferences#privacy, scroll to the end of the page and "Enable HTTPS-Only Mode in all Windows")
• Visit http.rip (and wait for 3 seconds)
• The HTTPS-Only Error Page appears stating that the page http.rip does not support https.

In some cases however it's also possible that adding 'www' makes the https request succeed. To reproduce:

• Start Firefox
• Enable HTTPS-Only Mode
• Visit http://speedofanimals.com (and wait for 3 seconds)
• The HTTPS-Only Error Page appears stating that http://speedofanimals.com does not support https.
  However, if you enter http://www.speedofanimals.com (note the www) then the upgrading to https succeeds.

Here is the task: "Provide Suggestions in the HTTPS-Only error page what requests would succeed."
In detail, modify the HTML, CSS and JS in the HTTPS-Error Page ( errorpage.html, errorpage.js, aboutHttpsOnlyError.css ) by providing suggestions to the end user what request would succeed, e.g in that case adding 'www'.

In more detail, once the error page appears because upgrading to https does not succeed, you could query the URL from the page that HTTPS-Only Mode tried to upgrade (e.g. in our example from above http://speedofanimals.com).
Take that URL, add 'www' (e.g. http://www.speedofanimals.com) and perform a request (e.g. fetch request) to that page. If the server responds, then provide a link (e.g. a href="") in the error page which the end user could then click on.

Bonus points for making the newly added mechanism visually attractive to the end user.

Please upload your contribution in the form of a phabricator code patch to this Bug. To set up Phabricator please follow these instructions: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Phabricator

Good Luck!

Comment 2

[sistersolstice]

I am not sure how to provide suggestions IN the HTTPS-only error page, so I will post my thoughts here as there is a lot I would still love to learn in this process. My first thought regarding the http website not upgrading to the HTTPS-only page is to encrypt the website via cert. This way the cert will provide the security for the site. The other suggestion is what is already mentioned in the feedback regarding using www in front of the url.
Another recommendation is to change the meta data tag in the html to allow access with the http site or make the content convert over to https. These are my suggestions on the HTTPS-only error page.

Comment 3

[Christoph Kerschbaumer [:ckerschb]]

Closing as INACTIVE.