Without HTTPS it’s useless!
I remember someone told me: this server is useless without HTTPS in my first posts on G+. I answered him with question: Do you mean the HTTP Authentication? Actually, It was more then one time. People have been asking me about those features all time even they don’t understand exactly what are they talking about. At least all people understand that a security is important thing and it must have all network services.
Internal or External security layer?
I’m still thinking for extra security you should use external tools so. It’s awesome that Linux have huge amount such tools.
Things to protect your personal data:
- Don’t expose data to the Internet!
- Use firewalls.
- Use Virtual Private Network (VPN) for limited access to your server.
- Encrypt your sensitive data before exposing on public services.
- Use embedded encryption tools in file compressors like 7zip, zip, rar at least.
But it’s always nice to have some standard abilities to protect your privacy out the box. About 6 months ago it was released HTTPS layer supporting to encrypt all traffic with self-signed TLS certificates. Now a standard HTTP Digest authentication released for Gnome extension users. Actually, it has been available for testing about 3 months for GitHub users.
There are two standard ISO methods for HTTP Authentication - Basic and Digest. Basic authentication is the weakest and oldest method but supported by many clients. Digest authentication is latest method and it provide good level security even for pure HTTP connections without SSL encoding layer. BTW many modern desktop software like players, downloaders don’t support HTTP Authentication at all. So make a feature request/report to add this features to your favorite applications. Be sure the most developers will be glad to talk about it.
So we have all we wanted :)
Release notes
- Add all available local IP addresses.
- Add HTTP Digest Authentication.
- Other small fixes and improvements.