• JCpac@lemmy.today
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    1 year ago

    Is it because of the “Host” HTTP header? I always thought it was optional, since the IP address and port were handled by the network and transport layers respectively. Turns out it’s required to resolve between different virtual hosts in the same server. Today I Remembered (TIR?) that virtual hosts are a thing…

    Is there anything else that might indicate the domain name in the handshake connection?

    • Domi@lemmy.secnd.me
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      1 year ago

      Is there anything else that might indicate the domain name in the handshake connection?

      The SNI (Server Name Indication) happens before any HTTP communication and is done in plain text. It is needed because a single web server might host multiple websites, since each of them has their own certificate it needs to know which one to serve you.

      With the new proposal that SNI is now encrypted. It makes the difference between anyone listening in being able to tell “you visited lemmy.world” and “you visited something behind Cloudflare”.