Wikipedia logo. IMG Source: Wikipedia
One of the world’s greatest source of knowledge - Wikipedia switches to HTTPS in order to encrypt all traffic. Foundation’s representatives highlight the risk of government surveillance.
The move makes it a lot harder for someone to snoop on users. Wikimedia shared the news on their blog. The Foundation will also use HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) to protect against attempts to break HTTPS traffic.
HTTPS is not new to Wikipedia pages. First efforts to implement the protocol started in 2011 when Wikimedia established the appropriate infrastructure and learned all the technical requirements and policies. Until now users had the opportunity to access protected sites manually. The process of transition was delayed due to the different ways users could access the site.
As the Wikimedia Foundation wrote:
Throughout this process, we have carefully considered how HTTPS affects all of our users. People around the world access Wikimedia sites from a diversity of devices, with varying levels of connectivity and freedom of information.”
Now Wikimedia feels a lot more confident to roll HTTPS out in the coming days.
Source: Wikimedia blog
