HTTP/3 Cover Giacomo Lanzi

HTTP / 3, everything you need to know about the latest version protocol

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Security researchers have just digested the HTTP / 2 protocol, but web innovators are already publishing an update: HTTP / 3. This technology offers performance gains and security benefits, but only if we overcome the implementation problems that await us for what appears to be an evolutionary change rather than a real revolution in the way the web works.

In this article I will try to clarify what the new HTTP / 3 protocol is, what its features are and how you can implement them to your web hosting through Cloudflare with the services offered by SOD. < / p>

HTTP/3 fast network

What is HTTP/3 in detail

HTTP / 3 is a major update of the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the technology that underlies the transfer of information on the web. HTTP / 3 runs on QUIC, an encrypted general transport protocol that “bundles” multiple data streams on a single connection.

QUIC was initially developed by Google and uses congestion control on User Datagram Protocol (UDP).

What is the relationship with HTTP/2?

HTTP / 2 has brought some improvements through non-blocking download technology, pipelining and server push that help overcome some limitations of the underlying TCP protocol HTTP / 2 as well as HTTP. Basically, with HTTP / 2 we can minimize the number of request – response cycles between client and server .

HTTP / 2 made it possible to send more than one resource on a single TCP connection, a process called multiplexing . The protocol provides greater flexibility in the order of static downloads and pages are no longer constrained by a linear progression of downloads.

It is possible to think of HTTP / 3 as the previous protocol which instead of using TCP for the transfer, uses QUIC, the protocol we mentioned above.

The benefits of the new protocol

The move to QUIC goes a long way towards solving one of the major HTTP/2 problems , namely “head of line blocking”, literally blocking the beginning of the line .

Since the parallel nature of HTTP/2 multiplexing is not visible to TCP’s loss recovery mechanisms, a lost or reordered packet causes all active transactions to stall , regardless of the whether or not a particular transaction was affected by the lost packet.

Since QUIC provides native multiplexing , lost packets only impact the streams in which the data was affected . The practical effect of upgrading to HTTP/3 is to reduce the latency of poor internet connections or frequent packet losses.

Furthermore, QUIC is almost entirely encrypted, which means that security is significantly improved with HTTP/3 . This built-in encryption means fewer opportunities for MitM ( manipulator-in-the-middle ) attacks. QUIC also includes other features that help protect against denial of service (DoS) exploits, which we discussed in another article in relation to ransomware.

QUIC combines its encrypted handshake and transport to allow connection to a new server in a single request . The same technology allows you to quickly resume a broken connection with the client sending encrypted application data in the first interaction. The protocol uses TLS 1.3 as a building block in its encrypted handshake.

Support for the new protocol

As of March 2021, the HTTP/3 protocol is still a standard draft and already has multiple implementations. Currently around 14.3% of the 10 million websites in existence support HTTP/3. For comparison, HTTP/2 is supported by 50.5% of platforms. Data source is W3Techs .

As far as browsers are concerned, the protocol is supported by stable versions of Chrome in a non-default way (from December 2019) and by Firefox (from January 2020).

HTTP/3 Secure connections

The benefits of introducing HTTP/3

HTTP/3 should offer faster load times and better performance for websites, particularly on networks prone to frequent packet loss, than previous technologies.

Achiel van der Mandele, Cloudflare product manager explained: “ In a nutshell, we believe that HTTP/3 will make the internet better for everyone . HTTP/3 is the successor to HTTP/2, which offers better performance when loading websites.

“HTTP/3 users will benefit from faster connection setup and better performance on poor quality networks with high amounts of packet loss. Both of these improvements ensure that websites are load faster and more reliably, “Mandele told The Daily Swig .

Web protocol expert Robin Marx was more cautious about the benefits of HTTP/3:

“Performance should also benefit, albeit not by much in practice,” he said. “Removing the head-of-line block doesn’t matter that much for [things like] loading web pages.

“Most of the gains will come from shorter handshake setup times,” he explained, adding that HTTP/3 and QUIC are “an evolution, not a revolution” .

“Performance will be better, but not in a super noticeable way for things like web browsing,” Marx said. “ Security should be better and protect against different types of attacks “. ( Source )

Availability of the protocol

As we have seen, the new HTTP / 3 transfer protocol could be a notable evolution in security rather than performance, where it will significantly excel in setting handshakes . Not all hosting services are currently able to offer support for the new protocol.

We at SOD offer this through Cloudflare, our partner for CDNs. In our web hosting service it is possible to enable CDN for free and then set up support for the new HTTP / 3 via the Cloudflare panel itself.

For more information, do not hesitate to contact us, we will be happy to answer any questions.

Useful links:

Useful links:

CloudFlare

Install a Let’s Encrypt certificate on Debian based machine

Share


RSS

More Articles…

Categories …

Tags

RSS darkreading

RSS Full Disclosure

  • SEC Consult SA-20241112-0 :: Multiple vulnerabilities in Siemens Energy Omnivise T3000 (CVE-2024-38876, CVE-2024-38877, CVE-2024-38878, CVE-2024-38879) November 13, 2024
    Posted by SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab via Fulldisclosure on Nov 12SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab Security Advisory < 20241112-0 > ======================================================================= title: Multiple vulnerabilities product: Siemens Energy Omnivise T3000 vulnerable version: >=8.2 SP3 fixed version: see solution section CVE number: CVE-2024-38876, CVE-2024-38877, CVE-2024-38878, CVE-2024-38879 impact: High...
  • Security issue in the TX Text Control .NET Server for ASP.NET. November 13, 2024
    Posted by Filip Palian on Nov 12Hej, Let&apos;s keep it short ... ===== Intro ===== A "sudo make me a sandwich" security issue has been identified in the TX Text Control .NET Server for ASP.NET[1]. According to the vendor[2], "the most powerful, MS Word compatible document editor that runs in all browsers". Likely all versions […]
  • SEC Consult SA-20241107-0 :: Multiple Vulnerabilities in HASOMED Elefant and Elefant Software Updater November 10, 2024
    Posted by SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab via Fulldisclosure on Nov 09SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab Security Advisory < 20241107-0 > ======================================================================= title: Multiple Vulnerabilities product: HASOMED Elefant and Elefant Software Updater vulnerable version:
  • Unsafe eval() in TestRail CLI November 7, 2024
    Posted by Devin Cook on Nov 06This is not a very exciting vulnerability, but I had already publicly disclosed it on GitHub at the request of the vendor. Since that report has disappeared, the link I had provided to MITRE was invalid, so here it is again. -Devin --- # Unsafe `eval()` in TestRail CLI […]
  • 4 vulnerabilities in ibmsecurity November 3, 2024
    Posted by Pierre Kim on Nov 03## Advisory Information Title: 4 vulnerabilities in ibmsecurity Advisory URL: https://pierrekim.github.io/advisories/2024-ibmsecurity.txt Blog URL: https://pierrekim.github.io/blog/2024-11-01-ibmsecurity-4-vulnerabilities.html Date published: 2024-11-01 Vendors contacted: IBM Release mode: Released CVE: CVE-2024-31871, CVE-2024-31872, CVE-2024-31873, CVE-2024-31874 ## Product description ## Vulnerability Summary Vulnerable versions:...
  • 32 vulnerabilities in IBM Security Verify Access November 3, 2024
    Posted by Pierre Kim on Nov 03## Advisory Information Title: 32 vulnerabilities in IBM Security Verify Access Advisory URL: https://pierrekim.github.io/advisories/2024-ibm-security-verify-access.txt Blog URL: https://pierrekim.github.io/blog/2024-11-01-ibm-security-verify-access-32-vulnerabilities.html Date published: 2024-11-01 Vendors contacted: IBM Release mode: Released CVE: CVE-2022-2068, CVE-2023-30997, CVE-2023-30998, CVE-2023-31001, CVE-2023-31004, CVE-2023-31005,...
  • xlibre Xnest security advisory & bugfix releases October 31, 2024
    Posted by Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult on Oct 31XLibre project security advisory --------------------------------- As Xlibre Xnest is based on Xorg, it is affected by some security issues which recently became known in Xorg: CVE-2024-9632: can be triggered by providing a modified bitmap to the X.Org server. CVE-2024-9632: Heap-based buffer overflow privilege escalation in _XkbSetCompatMap […]
  • APPLE-SA-10-29-2024-1 Safari 18.1 October 31, 2024
    Posted by Apple Product Security via Fulldisclosure on Oct 31APPLE-SA-10-29-2024-1 Safari 18.1 Safari 18.1 addresses the following issues. Information about the security content is also available at https://support.apple.com/121571. Apple maintains a Security Releases page at https://support.apple.com/100100 which lists recent software updates with security advisories. Safari Downloads Available for: macOS Ventura and macOS Sonoma Impact: An […]
  • SEC Consult SA-20241030-0 :: Query Filter Injection in Ping Identity PingIDM (formerly known as ForgeRock Identity Management) (CVE-2024-23600) October 31, 2024
    Posted by SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab via Fulldisclosure on Oct 31SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab Security Advisory < 20241030-0 > ======================================================================= title: Query Filter Injection product: Ping Identity PingIDM (formerly known as ForgeRock Identity Management) vulnerable version: v7.0.0 - v7.5.0 (and older unsupported versions) fixed version: various patches; v8.0 CVE number:...
  • SEC Consult SA-20241023-0 :: Authenticated Remote Code Execution in Multiple Xerox printers (CVE-2024-6333) October 29, 2024
    Posted by SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab via Fulldisclosure on Oct 28SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab Security Advisory < 20241023-0 > ======================================================================= title: Authenticated Remote Code Execution product: Multiple Xerox printers (EC80xx, AltaLink, VersaLink, WorkCentre)  vulnerable version: see vulnerable versions below fixed version: see solution section below CVE number: CVE-2024-6333...

Customers

Newsletter

{subscription_form_1}