Challenge 2: The Padlock Doesn't Guarantee Every Hop Is Encrypted — Solution Walkthrough

What's actually true:

The padlock and "https://" genuinely confirm that the connection
between the browser and whatever terminated TLS — the web server or
reverse proxy sitting at the front of the request path — is encrypted.
Per this chapter's own definition of termination, that's exactly what
"terminating" the TLS connection there means: the encrypted leg of the
journey ends at that point.

What the colleague is wrong about:

The padlock says nothing about what happens to the request after that
termination point. If a reverse proxy is forwarding the request on to
a separate backend application (Chapter 6's own reverse-proxy
material), that internal hop is very often plain HTTP, not encrypted
at all, unless someone has deliberately configured re-encryption for
that specific internal connection. The browser has no visibility into
this internal hop at all — it only ever talks to the proxy, so it has
no way to report on, or even detect, what happens beyond that point.

Why this is a reasonable design, not a flaw:

Leaving the internal proxy-to-backend hop unencrypted is a very common
and often perfectly reasonable choice when that hop stays within a
trusted private network the public internet can't reach directly — but
it is a deliberate choice being made, not an automatic guarantee that
comes bundled with "HTTPS is enabled" on the public-facing side.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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This exercise directly targets the exact misconception this chapter's
own warning box calls out — correctly separating what the padlock
actually confirms (encryption up to the termination point) from what
it says nothing about (anything past that point).