Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

burke

At a really rough approximation, this is how an SSL pageview works:

1. DNS query in plaintext for en.wikipedia.org.

2. Open a connection to the resultant IP (the fact that you connect to this IP is trace-able).

3. Do an SSL handshake.

4. HTTP protocol stuff, including transmission of PATH_INFO, happens on the encrypted channel.

5. Server responds on encrypted channel.

View on HN

Also worthwhile pointing out that if you have a local DNS cache (you almost certainly do), and if there are several hosts sharing a IP, given a cache hit, the adversary will only know the connection is to one of a set of hostnames (those you have previously requested and for whom the cache is still valid) or the IP itself.

Not with a modern browser with SNI. This transmits the host name in the initial unencrypted portion of the SSL connection.

Gotcha, thanks for the explanation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com