HTTP

Persistence · Compression · HTTP Secure

Headers

ETag · Cookie · Referrer · Location

Status codes

301 Moved permanently

302 Found

303 See Other

403 Forbidden

404 Not Found

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Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (S-HTTP) is a little-used alternative to the HTTPS URI scheme for encrypting web communications carried over HTTP. S-HTTP is defined in RFC 2660.

Web browsers typically use HTTP to communicate with web servers, sending and receiving information without encrypting it. For sensitive transactions, such as Internet e-commerce or online access to financial accounts, the browser and server must encrypt this information. HTTPS and S-HTTP were both defined in the mid-1990s to address this need. Netscape and Microsoft supported HTTPS rather than S-HTTP, leading to HTTPS becoming the de facto standard mechanism for securing web communications.

[edit] See also

• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
• HTTP Secure (HTTPS)

[edit] External links

• RFC 2660
• CommerceNet: About S-HTTP
• Overview of S-HTTP
• Technical description of S-HTTP

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