Re: Search engines and https

[Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>]

Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to> writes:
> On Wed, 19 Nov 1997, Adam Back wrote:
> > 
> > One thing you could do is to have your server use http (no s) iff the
> > connection comes from a known search engine.  Reasonably easy to do --
> > set up an http server, and block all sites, and put in allow
> > directives for the search engines.
> 
> Then the search engine would list the wrong URL. 

Yes; so make the failure page from your http server say: connect to
https://www.cypherpunks.to.

More elegant, but a bit more difficult, would be to do the right
thing.

That is: 

1. connection on https port & coming from *.altavista.com allow.
2. connection on https port & coming from somewhere else insist on SSL

(Would this work?  Wander if their spider will talk to https port with
http?)

> The idea is to get people to use crypto. In fact, as soon as I find
> the time, cypherpunks.to will reject weak crypto browsers and
> provide those unfortunate enough to use such a browser with pointers
> to upgrade options.

Kewl.  Anyone know where those patches to convert for netscape 40 bit
crippleware to 128 bit crypto are?

Save download time -- a version 4 browser is quite large to download.

Adam