A browser is a
program on the
client machine that
renders content
obtained from a
Web server, a program
running on a
remote machine
The Babel of Cryptography 47
different platforms and rapidly became the fabric that keeps
together the World Wide Web. Like many other things described
in these pages, HTTP was designed in the early, merrier days of
the Internet. As such, it does not give too much thought to security.
HTTPS provided an ef?¬?cient solution to that, at least from
the cryptographic standpoint.
HTTP
Let??™s see in more detail how the browser and the Web server use
HTTP for making possible the navigation experience.
Alice wants to access Bob??™s home page. She opens her browser
and types Bob??™s homepage address, say http://www.bob.com/
bob/homepage.htm, and presses the Enter key.
The browser parses the line from left to right. The ?¬?rst thing it
discovers is that it will have to talk HTTP; the second is that the
Web server it is supposed to talk with is www.bob.com. The
browser tries to open a connection with the Web server sitting at
that address, and then it sends the text shown in Figure 1-8.
For the purpose of the discussion, we can safely ignore the details
of the text.
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