[dragontamer]

Phishing for what though?

If it were a big network, like GameFAQs, Reddit, or you know, something where you can steal a password or something. Maybe you'd have a point.

But random blog with a bit of information on the game??

http://factorioguide.nfshost.com/

Real story btw. I'm paying a bit of money for the host (not much though), I don't believe in ads taking money from the few reads I do get. Its basically a static page that costs pennies. I'm no longer updating the webpage, but I'm leaving it up just in case someone out there wants to learn more about the game. (It doesn't seem like any of the information is out-of-date. Its a few years old but the game hasn't changed in this aspect, so the information is still solid).

I just don't see any point converting this webpage into HTTPS.

There's literally nothing to phish here.

[Scott_Helme_]

I'd really recommend watching the video in this blog post: https://www.troyhunt.com/heres-why-your-static-website-needs...

[dragontamer]

Yes, I'm aware of MITM attacks and I'm also aware that fake certificates can be used to MITM even HTTPS sessions.

So I'm not convinced that HTTPS is the solution for that hypothetical attack. Not while untrustworthy certificate authorities are default-enabled on most clients anyway. At best, HTTPS complicates the attack but it doesn't make you immune to it.

A hypothetical MITM attacker can just get a fake certificate from a low-security vendor (ex: Comodo), and serve that to get a nice "trusted" version of the fake webpage. If you control the network, you control the certs that are eventually served to the users.

https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/02/12/fake-ssl-certi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiNotar

[UncleMeat]

> At best, HTTPS complicates the attack but it doesn't make you immune to it.

That's literally all security. It isn't binary. It never is. At best, ASLR complicates ROP. At best, salts complicate breaking password hashes. At best, memory safe languages complicate buffer overflow attacks.

One could use your argument to dismiss basically all security. You've chosen zero mitm protection rather than a lot of mitm protection.

If you aren't using https then a network attacker with no preplanning can cause problems. If you are using https then a network attacker needs to get a bogus cert ahead of time. This costs money and time and does not scale well. Security is an economics issue. Making it more expensive to attack people is good.

[brandonsometig]

Did you intentionally ignore the malware injection point?

[supertrope]

Credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, online banking credentials, etc. The usual target data in fake tech support phishing scam.

example screenshot: https://www.pcrisk.com/images/stories/screenshots201703/zeus...

[dragontamer]

Okay, I get what you're saying then. Your example isn't exactly the best example... but I "get" what you're trying to say at least.

You're saying that someone can inject a "redirect header" into a fake webpage, force that upon my users through the control of a network (WiFi router or whatnot), and use my domain name and my trust to take advantage of the users.

(Your example with the Zeus malware is bad because Zeus attacked the OS directly, so it wasn't a network attack. But hypothetically, lets say it was a network attack so that it remains applicable to my example)

Alas, HTTPS does NOT solve that, at least not while globally trusted HTTPS certificate roots remain insecure. They only need to get one HTTPS certificate signed by Comodo (or some other low-security HTTPS vendor) to attack my domain name in a manner like that.

[supertrope]

That scam is mostly used through ad network vector not MITM. Btw it only references Zeus, it's not Zeus. A more subtle example is cryptocurrency miner scripts that result in your static page pegging a CPU core.

HTTPS raises the bar. There's no happily ever after in security. Maybe in five years domain hijacking and cert abuse will be as common as aforementioned fake tech support scams that prevent users from closing the tab. Some of them even set full-screen on desktop browsers and vibrate your phone (grr).

[dragontamer]

Oh, a fake Zeus scam. That makes more sense then.

> That scam is mostly used through ad network vector not MITM.

Just one more reason why I'm not going to use ads to fund any web-projects I do.

-------

I agree that HTTPS raises the bar and makes it more difficult for certain scams. Indeed, I'd go as far as to say that any webpage with user-inputtable data (ie: username, passwords, etc. etc.) is required to be HTTPS. The risks are too great and that's the minimum security users expect these days.

But I'm still of the opinion that Web 1.0 style static-sites can be served with HTTP just fine. If there's no usernames, no interativity, and PURELY hosting static content in a community that's relatively lax (again: Minecraft and Eve Online fail. I'd use HTTPS even for a static site if I were doing Minecraft or Eve Online stuff), then I'd think HTTP is just fine.