This site is the archived OWASP Foundation Wiki and is no longer accepting Account Requests.
To view the new OWASP Foundation website, please visit https://owasp.org
HTTP Strict Transport Security
This article is a stub. You can help OWASP by expanding it or discussing it on its Talk page.
Description
HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) is an opt-in security enhancement that is specified by a web application through the use of a special response header. Once a supported browser receives this header that browser will prevent any communications from being sent over HTTP to the specified domain and will instead send all communications over HTTPS.
Examples
Example of the HTTP strict transport security header
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=60000
If all subdomains are HTTPS to then the following header is applicable:
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=60000; includeSubDomains
Browser Support
| Browser |
Lowest Version Supported |
| Internet Explorer |
no support |
| Firefox |
4 |
| Opera |
10.50 |
| Safari |
4.0 |
| Chrome |
4.0.211.0 |
Server Side
The server side needs to inject the HSTS header.
For HTTP sites on the same domain it is recommended that a HSTS header be returned along with a permanent redirect to the HTTPS site.
An Apache HTTPd example that will permanently redirect a URL to the identical URL with a HTTPS scheme, and add a HSTS header for the client, is as follows:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAlias *
Header Always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=16070400; includeSubDomains"
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}$1 [redirect=301]
</VirtualHost>
