Most 8-bit machines can’t do HTTPS, but much of the web only answers that way. An HTTPS proxy closes the gap: it runs on a modern computer, usually the reader’s own, and speaks plain HTTP to the 8-bit machine and HTTPS to the world.
How it works
The proxy is a standard HTTP forward proxy. The client connects to the proxy and puts the full address in the request line:
GET https://example.com/index.8tml HTTP/1.0
Host: example.comThe proxy fetches the page over HTTPS and returns it over plain HTTP. On the way it:
- turns non-ASCII text into ASCII (curly quotes, accented letters, dashes),
- answers responses above a size limit, unreachable hosts and malformed requests with a short 8TML error page and an error status.
Security
The connection between the machine and the proxy is not encrypted. On a home network that’s fine; across the internet anyone on the way can read it. A proxy open to the whole internet is quickly found and abused, so run it on your own computer, for your own machines.