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Phillip L. Cabrera M.
Phillip L. Cabrera M.

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Difference between HTTP and HTTPS

What is HTTP and HTTPS?

Surely when browsing on your PC, Laptop, Smartphone or tablet you have noticed that when using the default browser (Chrome, Safari, Brave, etc...) the web pages start with the words http:// or https://, but do you know what it means? Let me explain you.

http

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. It is basically a protocol or set of rules that dictate how information sent from one device to another should be sent, received, and interpreted.
This is what happens when we search for something in our browser.

  • We enter our address or domain (www.example.com).
  • When clicking or typing the Enter key, a signal is sent to the server that hosts said domain, but this information as such is sent through the Http protocol.
  • When the server receives this request depending on various factors such as availability, hardware speed, connection, etc... it responds to our request using the Http protocol.

Http vs Https Image

This type of interaction between the client (us) and the server happens in fractions of seconds. But already knowing all this, how does Http differ from Https?

When the information is sent through the Http protocol, the information that we send to the server, such as our passwords, are sent in plain text, in other words, if someone malicious intercepts the data sent between the client and the server, they will be able to fully read the information, however, using the Https protocol (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure) Secure hypertext transfer protocol, the information between the client and the server is sent in an encrypted manner which can only be decrypted using cryptographic keys (SSH) which are unique and assigned between the client and server.
In this way, even if our information is intercepted, it cannot be read since it would lack the necessary keys for its decryption and subsequent interpretation.

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