Ssl – HTTP over port 443 vs HTTPS over port 80

http and https refer to the protocol in use.

http is used for unencrypted cleartext communication, which means transferred data may be intercepted and read in plain by a human. Username/password fields may for instance be captured and read.

https refers to SSL/TLS encrypted communication. It must be decrypted to be read. Normally/ideally only the endpoints are capable of encrypting/decrypting the data, although this is a statement with caveats (see edit below).

Therefore https may be considered more secure than http.

:80 and :443 refer only to the server port in use (i.e. it is "just a number") and carries no significance at all with regards to security.

However, there is a strong convention to send http over port 80 and https over port 443, which makes the combinations in the question more than a little unorthodox. They are technically perfectly usable though, as long as the endpoints are in agreement and no intermediary filter objects.

So to answer, http://example.com:443 is less secure than https://example.com:80 and the difference is practical (even though it can be offset in a number of ways) and not merely theoretical.

You can easily test the validity of these statements using a webserver and client where you manipulate the serverport and the encryption status, whilst capturing and comparing each session with a protocol decoder such as wireshark.

[EDIT - caveats regarding the security of the client/server path]

What essentially amounts to an https man-in-the-middle attack can be performed for purposes of eavesdropping or impersonation. It may be done as an act of malevolence, benevolence or as it turns out even due to ignorance, depending on circumstance.

The attack can be done either through exploiting a protocol weakness such as the heartbleed bug or the Poodle vulnerability, or through instantiating an https proxy between the client and server in the network path or directly on the client.

Malevolent use does not need much explanation, I think. Benevolent use would be for example an organisation proxying incoming https connections for purposes of logging/ids, or outgoing https connections for filtering allowed/denied applications. An example of ignorant use would be the Lenovo Superfish example linked above or the recent Dell variation of the same slip-up.

EDIT 2

Ever noticed how the world keeps the surprises coming? A scandal just erupted in Sweden, where three county council healthcare organisations have used the same supply chain for registering health care events through patient telephone calls.

As it were, the question thereby gets an answer on the grand scale of things. If only it were a practical joke and not an actual event...

I will simply paste two snippets translated from the news text in Computer Sweden:

”Computer Sweden can today reveal one of the greatest disasters ever regarding health care patient security and personal integrity. On an open webserver without any form of password protection or other method of security, we have found 2,7 million recorded calls from patients to the healthcare through the medical advisory number 1177. The calls go back to 2013 and contain 170.000 hours of sensitive voice call files which anybody could download and listen to.

[...]

The calls have been saved on Voice Integrated Nordics storage server at the ip address http://188.92.248.19:443/medicall/. Tcp-port 443 indicates the traffic has been passed over https, but the session is not encrypted.

I cannot decide if this is yet another example of ignorance, or if we’re seeing an entirely new category. Please advice.