Welcome to the NICER Protocol Deep Dive blog series! When we started researching what all was out on the internet way back in January, we had no idea we'd end up with a hefty, 137-page tome of a research report. The sheer length of such a thing might put off folks who might otherwise learn a thing or two about the nature of internet exposure, so we figured, why not break up all the protocol studies into their own reports?
So, here we are! What follows is taken directly from our National / Industry / Cloud Exposure Report (NICER), so if you don't want to wait around for the next installment, you can cheat and read ahead!
[Research] Read the full NICER report today
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HTTP (TCP/80) & HTTPS (TCP/443)
One protocol to bring them all, and in the darkness, bind them.
TLDR
WHAT IT IS: HTTP: Pristine, plaintext Hypertext Transfer Protocol communications. HTTPS: Encrypted HTTP.
HOW MANY: 51,519,309 discovered HTTP nodes. 36,141,137 discovered HTTPS nodes. We’re going to be talking a bit differently about fingerprinting in this blog post, so raw, generic counts will have no context.
VULNERABILITIES: Hoo boy! Many! But, do you mean vulnerabilities in core web servers themselves? The add-ons folks build into them? The web applications they serve? As many users of Facebook might say, “it’s complicated.”
ADVICE: Go back to Gopher! Seriously, though, please continue to build awesome things using HTTPS. Just build them in such a way that folks who install and operate web servers can easily configure them securely, see patch status, and upgrade quickly and confidently.
ALTERNATIVES: nicer protocol internet exposure https
