Popular Windows Troubleshooting Site Is Now SSL-Enabled
The popular Sysinternals site acquired by Microsoft nearly two decades ago with troubleshooting utilities, tools and help files is now SSL-enabled. The cocreator steward of the site Mark Russinovich, Microsoft's Azure CTO, tweeted the news earlier in the week.
Microsoft and many others are making the move to use the SSL protocol for Web sites -- the long-established Secure Sockets Layer standard used for encrypted Web sessions. Enabled for decades in sites where financial transactions and other secure communications are necessary, the move to HTTPS sessions from HTTP is rapidly spreading rapidly as the hazards of intercepted communications is on the rise.
If you ask, why would a site that just hosts documentation need an HTTPS connection, consider there are lots of executables there as well, and though all the binaries are signed, using SSL to access the tools via the online share prevents man-in-the-middle tampering in cases where the user doesn't validate the signature before launching the tool.
[Click on image for larger view.]
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 02/12/2015 at 1:28 PM