Re: Proposed Statement on "HTTPS everywhere for the IETF"

[Xiaoyin Liu <[e-mail]>]

Hi,
 
I support this IESG statement. Here are my suggestions on how to implement this statement:
 
1) Fix all the mixed content issues on the IETF websites, such as https://tools.ietf.org/wg/dprive/draft-ietf-dprive-problem-statement/, which contains JavaScript loaded from http://trac.tools.ietf.org/tools/trac/htdocs/js/jquery.js.
2) Change all hardcoded http links to protocol relative or https, such as the "List Archive" link on [1].
3) Add <link rel="canonical" href="https://..."> to every page, so that search engines will prefer to index HTTPS links.[2][3]
4) Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security for every IETF subdomains, and submit ietf.org to the HSTS preload list.[4] I know that the IESG still wants cleartext content to be available. But I think HSTS is very important. There are many HTTP links to IETF on the Internet, such as those on our mailing lists, that are unlikely to update regardless of this statement. HSTS can help in this case. People using non-browser clients, IE, and old phone browsers are not affected by HSTS.
5) Please ask the RFC Editor Team to update their website (https://www.rfc-editor.org/) according to this IESG statement as well. Currently there is no way to submit or view RFC errata over HTTPS. https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata.php redirects to http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata.php.
 
Thanks!
Xiaoyin Liu
 
[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/appsawg/documents/
[2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6596 
[3] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?rd=1#https
[4] https://hstspreload.appspot.com/