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CloudFlare aims to simplify SSL encryption with free service

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Having encryption is critical to advancing a more secure future of the Internet, according to CloudFlare

More and more websites are looking to enable SSL encryption to protect their visitors from eavesdroppers and hackers. Now web infrastructure company CloudFlare will make it a bit easier by adding that feature to the free version of its hosting service.

Revelations about government snooping and Google's decision to prioritize sites with encryption turned on in its search results have given SSL a big push.

However, cost and complexity have meant that before Monday fewer than 0.4 percent of websites were encrypted, according to CloudFlare. It aims to boost that with Universal SSL, which works regardless of budget or technical know-how, the company said. The two million sites that today use the free version of CloudFlare's service will be the first that are able to take advantage of the feature.

Having encryption may not seem important to a small blog, but it's critical to advancing the "encrypted-by-default future" of the Internet, according to CloudFlare. Every byte that's protected makes life more difficult for those who wish to intercept, throttle, or censor the web, the company said in a blog post on Monday.

For sites that didn't have SSL before, CloudFlare will use its Flexible SSL mode by default. That means traffic from browsers to CloudFlare will be encrypted, but traffic from CloudFlare to a site's server will not. Site owners need to install a certificate on their web servers to encrypt that segment, as well. To help, CloudFlare will publish a blog post with instructions.

A bonus with Universal SSL is that the feature is compatible with SPDY, a protocol used to speed up web traffic by minimizing latency.

As with many free services there are some limitation compared to paid plans. The main one in this case is that Universal SSL only works with modern browsers, which excludes about 20 percent of web requests. To get support for all browsers, users need to sign up for CloudFlare Pro (which costs from US$20 per month), Business or Enterprise.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com

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CloudFlare Pushes More Encrypted Web

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Whether a website sells salon appointments or stolen credit-card numbers, Matthew Prince wants to protect it.

Prince, chief executive of CloudFlare, a San Francisco cybersecurity and network company, is allowing customers to encrypt connections to their sites for free. Prince, 39 years old, says the offer could extend encryption to roughly two million websites that use the free version of CloudFlares service.

Encryption would create hurdles for both fraudsters and governments, security experts said. Hackers would have a more difficult time spoofing legitimate websites. Intelligence agencies could be challenged to figure out what protesters are reading online.

The move is an important step in making encrypted connections standard, said Morgan Marquis-Boire, a security researcher at the University of Torontos Citizen Lab. People in Vietnam would be able to feel a little safer about reading a blog critical of the government, he added.

Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, added, Its huge.

CloudFlares move is the latest effort by Silicon Valley to harden the Internet against both spies and cybercriminals since former National Security Administration contractor Edward Snowden last year revealed the extent of government surveillance, and tech-company cooperation. In April, Google announced it would give bonus points in its search-ranking algorithm to websites that use encryption.

Today, fewer than three million of one billion websites use encryption, according to surveys from Netcraft, which monitors Internet traffic. Many media sites including wsj.com dont use encryption for their homepages because it doesnt work with some advertising networks.

Encryption scrambles data and communication with the page, preventing hackers from stealing credit-card numbers in transit or spying on which pages are accessed. It also lets users know they have reached the website they intended to reach. If a site uses encryption, its web address will start with https instead of http, and a colored padlock will appear next to the address.

Encryption is primarily used by larger website operators. Small operators use it less frequently because of the cost.

Prince says he reached deals with the companies that issue encryption certificates to reduce the cost. But he said the offer will hurt CloudFlares bottom line.

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InfoWorld Bossies

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Deadlines and guidelines for all InfoWorld Bossies candidates

InfoWorld staff (InfoWorld) on 30 September, 2014 07:21

InfoWorld's Best of Open Source Software Awards

Each year, InfoWorld's Bossies (Best of Open Source Software awards) recognize the best open source software for businesses and professional users. InfoWorld's central mission has always been to identify the most innovative products available to developers and IT organizations. Increasingly, those products -- ranging from application development tools to platforms and infrastructure software to CRM and ERP applications -- come from open source projects. Bossie winners are chosen by InfoWorld editors and reviewers.

To nominate your favorite open source project for the 2015 awards, email Executive Editor Doug Dineley by July 31, 2014. In addition to the name of the specific software project you're nominating, please provide links to the project's main page and repository. A few sentences on why the software is important and award worthy would be welcome but is not required. The winners will be announced Sept. 2, 2015.

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InfoWorld Bossies

Bossies 2014: The Best of Open Source Software Awards

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Discover the best: 130 open source projects in six categories, chosen by InfoWorld editors and contributors

If you hadn't noticed, we're in the midst of an incredible boom in enterprise technology development -- and open source is leading it. You're unlikely to find better proof of that dynamism than this year's Best of Open Source Software Awards, affectionately known as the Bossies.

Have a look for yourself. The result of months of exploration and evaluation, plus the recommendations of many expert contributors, the 2014 Bossies cover more than 130 award winners in six categories:

The best open source applicationsThe best open source application development toolsThe best open source data center and cloud softwareThe best open source desktop and mobile softwareThe best open source networking and security softwareThe best open source big data tools

This year'sBossies were more exciting to pull together than ever, simply because we had so many new candidates to choose from. Why the embarrassment of riches? Because open source has become the preferred way to bring innovation to market.

The business motivation for this is clear: Once software becomes entrenched in an organization, it's hard to dislodge -- particularly proprietary software, where sales reps and contracts do everything to maintain the status quo. One way to get customers to consider switching vendors is to offer production software under an open source license -- not just demos, but even pilot programs can be conducted at low risk.

When you're talking about individual user adoption, the open source evaluation process is downright pain-free. Take the biggest chunk of this year's awards, the application development tools section. Thanks in part to the social coding trend, developers have become viral marketers, creating a constant churn of open source recommendations from peer to peer. It's safe to say that open source now absolutely dominates application development tools.

As a consequence of this hive mentality, when great open source solutions surface, they spread like wildfire and quickly inspire swarms of add-ons that pile on value -- many of them built by engaged developer-customers. The Docker ecosystem is a prime example and figures prominently in this year's Bossies.

Clearly, open source is changing the way software is procured. In the era of monster contracts and a few monster software vendors, upper IT management called all the shots and passed down applications and tools the rest of the organization had to live with. Open source is helping to crack that monolith, so businesses and individuals can make their own software decisions.

Make no mistake: Although open source incurs less capital expense, it's not free -- nor even necessarily cheap compared to proprietary software. Generally speaking, at scale, open source solutions require a higher level of effort and expertise to implement and maintain. Open source's rapid pace of innovation often results in more frequent updates, which means a closer eye on dependencies. In addition, professional services and commercial open source contracts result in significant cost.

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Bossies 2014: The Best of Open Source Software Awards

038 Token vs Coin Bitcoin TokenControlledAccess Innovation Artists Cryptocurrency – Video

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038 Token vs Coin Bitcoin TokenControlledAccess Innovation Artists Cryptocurrency
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040 CryptoToken Cryptocurrency Bitcoin Innovation Funny Money Hashtags Metacoin LTBcoin Ethereum Art - Video

041 TokenControlledAccess+SoulTradeGame are very similar Innovation Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Trade P2P – Video

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041 TokenControlledAccess+SoulTradeGame are very similar Innovation Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Trade P2P
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041 TokenControlledAccess+SoulTradeGame are very similar Innovation Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Trade P2P - Video

042 CryptoToken+SoulTradeGame=similar Innovation Cryptocurrency Bitcoin Trade P2P Money LTBcoin Art – Video

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042 CryptoToken+SoulTradeGame=similar Innovation Cryptocurrency Bitcoin Trade P2P Money LTBcoin Art
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042 CryptoToken+SoulTradeGame=similar Innovation Cryptocurrency Bitcoin Trade P2P Money LTBcoin Art - Video

Julian Assange Speaks in Nantucket—As a Hologram

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A ghostly Julian Assange appeared by hologram at the Nantucket Project on Sunday, beamed in from the Ecuadorian embassy where he has stayed under political asylum since 2012 (though he says he will soon leave).

Interviewed by the filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, Assange discussed digital analogues to the shops and services in the old town square: banks, stores, post offices and libraries.

I am in some ways, he said, just a simple librarian whos very good at saying no.

However, as his self-appointed WikiLeaks title of editor in chief suggests, hes also a publisher. And from inside the Ecuadorean embassy, hes found it very hard to carry out that role. I cant physically meet sources, he said, noting that this makes for a particular challenge when dealing with others who are also confined in some way, like Ai WeiWei, who cannot leave China.

Labels that Assange will not accept for himself include vigilante and martyr. He says he made his decision to leak the controversial Chelsea Manning papers with a level head, predicting that it would be a hard time for maybe five to seven years, but that there will be some benefits to his risk. Four years later, he stands by that decision.

He believes the Tim Berners-Lees recent call for a Magna Carta of the Internet probably should be done, but he is skeptical that we can actually reach international consensus. We will create norms as norms have always been created in the past, he says, not mainly by belief, not mainly be desire, but by action.

Assange discussed his new book, When Google Met WikiLeaks, and noted that Google executive chairman Eric Schmidts book, How Google Works, has also come out this week. If you see Eric Schmidts book, the cover of it is remarkably similar to the cover of this book, he said, brandishing a hologram version of his own. So similar that Im not sure the timing was a coincidence in publication. Both covers are inspired by Googles iconic homepage.

Google, Assange says, would pass itself off as a company of fluffy graduate students, or, not even a company at all, but something that gives free services.

Its not that, he says. Its a normal company, just like other normal companies in the U.S. It should be seen as a normal company.

However, Google differs from other normal companies, he says, in its project to collect as much information about the world as is possible, store it, index it, make predictive models about peoples interests, and use that to sell advertising. This, he says, is basically what the National Security Agency is doing.

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