Firefox 37 to Encrypt Non-HTTPS Traffic

Mozilla is making great strides towards making user experience as secure as possible, and with the release of Firefox 37 it brings HTTP encryption, without a need for HTTPS, the standard security layer for communications protocol encryption.

The latest iteration of Firefox achieves this thanks to what is known as opportunistic encryption. To achieve this, Firefox will route port 80 requests not sent in cleartext to a port that the server administrator can choose, so long as the server supports HTTP/2 protocol and specify the AltSvc header.

It’s not the most secure method of encrypting data, since it can still be vulnerable to targeted attacks, but it is certainly better than nothing, and is safe enough for everyday internet browsing.

Other additions to Firefox 37 include HTML5 playback and WebGL rendering improvements, using HTTPS for Bing searches, and strengthened protection against site impersonation via OneCRL centralised certificate revocation.

Source: FavBrowser