What is HTTPS, and How Does it Work?

What is HTTPS?

Since the beginning of the Internet, HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) has been used to transfer information between the client and the server. The data is transferred in plain text format through HTTP. This means an attacker can get access to the data that is being transferred over the Internet. In the initial years of the Internet, the data that was transferred was mostly static HTML pages and did not raise any security concerns. As the Internet became more widely used for sensitive tasks like banking, more people felt the need for a secure way to transfer their data.

In 1994, Netscape Communications enhanced HTTP with some encryption. They introduced a new encryption protocol named Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and added it on top of HTTP. This combination of HTTP and SSL is called HTTPS (HTTP Secure).

In 1999, Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol was introduced. This was more efficient than the SSL protocol, so SSL is no longer used.