HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) and NGINX
HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) and NGINX Netcraft recently published a study of the SSL/TLS sites they monitor, and observed that only 5% of them correctly implement HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). This article describes how to configure NGINX and NGINX Plus to implement an HSTS policy. What is HSTS? HTTPS (SSL and TLS) is an essential part of the measures to secure traffic to a website, making it very difficult for an attacker to intercept, modify, or fake traffic between a user and the website. When a user enters the web domain manually or follows a plain http:// link, the first request to the website is sent unencrypted, using plain HTTP. Most secured websites immediately send back a redirect to upgrade the user to an HTTPS connection, but a well-placed attacker can mount a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack to intercept the [ more… ]