HSTS preload

If you have already started using HSTS to force users to your HTTPS website, the use of ‘preload’ is another simple addition as it only requires the addition of the keyword to the header.

Once done, you can either wait for your site to be identified (which can take a long time, or forever for less popular websites) or ideally, submit your hostname to be added to the lists preloaded in many modern browsers. The advantage here is that your users will never make a single request to your HTTP website and will automatically be directed to HTTPS.

An HTTP Header example:

Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains; preload

Apache2 configuration example:

Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload"

REFERENCES:

SameSite cookies

Recently, while reading through the updated 2017 OWASP Top Ten RC1 documentation, last updated in 2013, I noticed a recommendation to use Cookies with the “SameSite=strict” value set to reduce CSRF exposure in section A8.

Consider using the “SameSite=strict” flag on all cookies, which is increasingly supported in browsers.

Similar to the way that HttpOnly and Secure attributes have been added, SameSite allows for additional control.

Per the documentation, as of April 2017 the SameSite attribute is implemented in Chrome 51 and Opera 39. Firefox has an open defect, but I would expect it to be added soon to follow Chrome.


Set-Cookie: CookieName=CookieValue; SameSite=Lax;
Set-Cookie: CookieName=CookieValue; SameSite=Strict;

According to the specification you can issue the SameSite flag without a value and Strict will be assumed:


Set-Cookie: CookieName=CookieValue; SameSite

As many programming languages and server runtime environments do not yet support this for session cookies, you can use the Apache Tier1 configuration to append them.


Header edit Set-Cookie ^(JSESSIONID.*)$ $1;SameSite=Strict
Header edit Set-Cookie ^(PHPSESSID.*)$ $1;SameSite=Strict

It looks like PHP.INI might support the following attribute in a future release, but it’s not there yet!

session.cookie_samesite

REFERENCES:

HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)

The HTTP Strict Transport Security feature lets a web site inform the browser that it should never load the site using HTTP, and should automatically convert all attempts to access the site using HTTP to HTTPS requests instead.

Example Use case:
If a web site accepts a connection through HTTP and redirects to HTTPS, the user in this case may initially talk to the non-encrypted version of the site before being redirected, if, for example, the user types http://www.foo.com/ or even just foo.com.

Problem:
This opens up the potential for a man-in-the-middle attack, where the redirect could be exploited to direct a user to a malicious site instead of the secure version of the original page.

Risk:
For HTTP sites on the same domain it is not recommended to add a HSTS header but to do a permanent redirect (301 status code) to the HTTPS site.

Bonus:
Google is always “tweaking” their search algorithms, and, at least at present time, gives greater weight to secure websites.


# Optionally load the headers module:
LoadModule headers_module modules/mod_headers.so

<VirtualHost *:443>
# Guarantee HTTPS for 1 Year including Sub Domains
Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubdomains; preload"
</VirtualHost>

Then you might (optionally, but recommended) force ALL HTTP users to HTTPS:

# Redirect HTTP connections to HTTPS
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAlias *
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
#RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}$1 [redirect=301]
</IfModule>
</VirtualHost>

That’s it…

REFERENCES:

JavaScript “use strict”

ECMAScript 5 added Strict Mode to JavaScript. Many of you may have first seen mention of this if you’ve used JSLint. It helps to remember that JavaScript still behaves much like an interpreted vs. compiled language as each browser/parser makes assumptions to execute code faster in different manners.

There are four primary features/goals of strict mode:

  • Throws errors for some common coding issues, that are sometimes obscure but previously didn’t throw an error.
  • Prevents or throws errors for potentially “unsafe” actions (such as gaining access to the global object).
  • Disables functions that are confusing or poorly thought out
  • Potentially code in strict mode could run faster by eliminating mistakes that would make it difficult for JavaScript engines to perform optimizations

Initial support added in FireFox 4 and MSIE10:

WARNING: if you chose to do this at a ‘file’ level, be sure to never concatenate several files together that are not ALL strict.

JS File Example:
"use strict";
function testFunction(){
var testvar = 1;
return testvar;
}

// This causes a syntax error.
testvar = 2;

JS Function Example:
function testFunction(){
"use strict";
// This causes a syntax error.
testvar = 1;
return testvar;
}
testvar = 2;

REFERENCES: