Chromium Blog

Chromium Blog

News and developments from the open source browser project

Towards HTTPS by default

Wednesday, August 16, 2023
Chrome will inform you if a file was downloaded insecurely.



Expanding HTTPS-First Mode protections for more people


Our ultimate goal is to enable HTTPS-First Mode for everyone. To that end, we're expanding HTTPS-First Mode protections to several new areas:

  • We've enabled HTTPS-First Mode for users enrolled in Google's Advanced Protection Program who are also signed-in to Chrome. These users have asked Google for the strongest protection available, and HTTPS-First Mode helps avoid the very real threats of insecure connections these users face.

  • We're planning to enable HTTPS-First Mode by default in Incognito Mode for a more secure browsing experience soon. 

  • We're currently experimenting with automatically enabling HTTPS-First-Mode protections on sites that Chrome knows you typically access over HTTPS.

  • Finally, we're exploring automatically enabling HTTPS-First Mode for users that only very rarely use HTTP.



Try it out


If you'd like to try out HTTPS upgrading or warning on insecure downloads before they roll out to everyone, you can do so in Chrome today by enabling the "HTTPS Upgrades" and "Insecure download warnings" flags at chrome://flags.  And if you want stronger protections, you can also turn on HTTPS-First Mode by enabling "Always use secure connections" in Chrome security settings (chrome://settings/security)!



Information for Developers and Enterprise


If you're a developer, you can ensure your users don't see warnings or encounter failed upgrades on your sites by using HTTPS and ensuring that your site doesn't host content only accessible over HTTP. We encourage you to fully adopt HTTPS and redirect all HTTP URLs to their HTTPS equivalents. Even if you believe that your site does not host personal information, using HTTP puts your users at increased risk of network attackers injecting malicious content into their browsers. Malicious network attackers rely on insecure sites to get a foothold towards your users. We're exploring additional ways we can reduce the risk users experience by visiting insecure websites by, for instance, reducing the lifetime of cookies accessible over HTTP -- switching to HTTPS ensures that your users' experience will not be impacted by these future changes. If you can't support HTTPS yet, you can ensure that users can access your site by making sure that your server either does not respond to requests on port 443 at all, or uses HTTPS to redirect users back to HTTP.


We know that enterprises and education networks have unique needs. These features can be turned on early, customized, or turned off entirely via the HttpsOnlyMode, HttpsUpgradesEnabled, HttpAllowlist, and InsecureContentAllowedForUrls policies. 



Part of our ongoing commitment


Chrome has a long history of working towards a secure-by-default web, and we're not stopping here.  We're so close to the finish line, and we're excited to help the web get to HTTPS by default.


Post by Joe DeBlasio, Chrome Security team
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