oogle researchers say they've devised a way to significantly reduce the time it takes websites to establish encrypted connections with end-user browsers, a breakthrough that could make it less painful for many services to offer the security feature.
What's more, the technique known as False Start requires that only simple changes be made to a user's browser and appears to work with 99 percent of active sites that offer SSL, or secure sockets layer, protection.
"We implemented SSL False Start in Chrome 9, and the results are stunning, yielding a significant decrease in overall SSL connection setup times," Google software engineer Mike Belshe wrote in a blog post published Wednesday. "SSL False Start reduces the latency of a SSL handshake by 30%. That is a big number."
The finding should come as welcome news to those concerned about online privacy. With the notable exceptions of Twitter, Facebook, and a handful of Google services, many websites send the vast majority of traffic over unencrypted channels, making it easy for governments, administrators, and Wi-Fi hotspot providers to snoop or even modify potentially sensitive communications while in transit. Companies such as eBay have said it's too costly to offer always-on encryption.
The Firesheep extension introduced last year for the Firefox browser drove home just how menacing the risk of unencrypted websites can be.
Read more: The register
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