Nov 30 2005
Browser Makers Band Together Against Phishers and Give Trusted Sites a Green Look
This is important:
“Developers of four of the most widely used Internet browsers (ed. Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Konqueror) have agreed to make a number of changes to their products to make Web browsing a more secure and trustworthy experience.”
“The basic plan would be for all browsers to tint the address bar green when users visit major-brand sites with a “highly-assured” digital certificate. Suspicious sites that might be sources of phishing scams would be indicated by a red address bar. A padlock icon would be also be set in the address bar, where it’s more visible, when users are at an SSL-secured page.”
“Additionally, the plan would put an address bar in every browser window, even those popped up or under as forms, to defeat fraudsters’ camouflaging tricks.”
“Some browsers already include elements of the plan. Firefox and the open-source Konqueror, for example, put the padlock icon in the address bar, while the under-development Internet Explorer 7 uses the green/red combination in its integrated anti-phishing filter.”
Covered here on Yahoo! and here on InfoWorld.
I hope these guys can pull this off, but it is highly dependent on the parties being able to push forward these ideas consistently and on the certificate signing authorities coming up with a yet-unspecified rigorously checked “high assurance certificate”. It will also mean we’re given yet more power to the big CA’s like VeriSign.
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