What is https-everywhere-standalone?

HTTPS Everywhere Standalone is a tool that automatically upgrades your web browsing from insecure HTTP connections to secure HTTPS whenever possible. The EFF's HTTPS Everywhere project maintains a large database of websites that support secure connections, and this tool uses that database to redirect your traffic without requiring a browser extension. Instead of installing an add-on in every browser on every device, you configure this tool once as a proxy and it handles the upgrades for all connected devices. The tool acts as a middleman between your device and the internet. When you try to visit a website over an insecure connection, it checks whether that site supports HTTPS. If it does, the tool rewrites your request to use the secure version before it reaches the open internet. It does this using an existing project called mitmproxy, which can intercept and modify web traffic in real time, combined with the HTTPS Everywhere ruleset to know which sites can be upgraded. This would appeal to someone running a small network where they want to protect all connected devices at once, rather than configuring each one individually. A practical example from the README involves setting up a Raspberry Pi as a wifi access point that devices connect to. Any phone, tablet, or laptop joining that network automatically gets its insecure web traffic upgraded to HTTPS, with no setup needed on the devices themselves. The README notes this is a research project, so the team is not committing to ongoing maintenance or bug fixes. It also relies on specific versions of its dependencies and has fairly particular setup requirements, including some build steps that are noted to take a while. This makes it better suited for experimentation and proof-of-concept testing than for production use where reliability matters.