Security HTTP Headers

Posted on: July 26, 2018 by Dimitar Ivanov

Overview

Last few years a bunch of new HTTP headers were added to the web platform. The purpose of this blog post is to discuss the most critical headers from a security perspective.

X-Frame-Options
X-XSS-Protection
X-Content-Type-Options
Strict-Transport-Security
Content-Security-Policy
Access-Control-Allow-Origin
Public-Key-Pins
Referrer-Policy
Expect-CT
Feature-Policy
Permissions-Policy
Clear-Site-Data
Cross-Origin-Resource-Policy
Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy
Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy

X-Frame-Options

This http header helps avoiding clickjacking attacks. Browser support is as follow: IE 8+, Chrome 4.1+, Firefox 3.6.9+, Opera 10.5+, Safari 4+. Posible values are:

deny: browser refuses to display requested document in a frame
sameorigin: browser refuses to display requested document in a frame, in case that origin does not match
allow-from: DOMAIN: browser displays requested document in a frame only if it loaded from DOMAIN

// Raw header
X-Frame-Options: sameorigin

// How to send the response header with PHP
header("X-Frame-Options: sameorigin");

// How to send the response header with Apache (.htaccess)
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set X-Frame-Options "sameorigin"
</IfModule>

// How to send the response header with Express.js
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    res.header("X-Frame-Options", "sameorigin");
    next();
});

Note: The Content-Security-Policy HTTP header has a frame-ancestors directive which obsoletes this header for supporting browsers.

X-XSS-Protection

Use this header to enable browser built-in XSS Filter. It prevent cross-site scripting attacks. X-XSS-Protection header is supported by IE 8+, Opera, Chrome, and Safari. Available directives:

0: disables the XSS Filter
1: enables the XSS Filter. If a cross-site scripting attack is detected, in order to stop the attack, the browser will sanitize the page.
1; mode=block: enables the XSS Filter. Rather than sanitize the page, when a XSS attack is detected, the browser will prevent rendering of the page.
1; report=<reporting-URI>: enables the XSS Filter. If a cross-site scripting attack is detected, the browser will sanitize the page and report the violation.

// Raw header
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block

// How to send the response header with PHP
header("X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block");

// How to send the response header with Apache (.htaccess)
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block"
</IfModule>

// How to send the response header with Express.js
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    res.header("X-XSS-Protection", "1; mode=block");
    next();
});

X-Content-Type-Options

This http header is supported by IE and Chrome, and prevents attacks based on MIME-type mismatch. The only possible value is nosniff. If your server returns X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff in the response, the browser will refuse to load the styles and scripts in case they have an incorrect MIME-type. The list with available MIME-types for styles and scripts is as follow:

Styles

text/css

Scripts

application/ecmascript
application/javascript
application/x-javascript
text/ecmascript
text/javascript
text/jscript
text/x-javascript
text/vbs
text/vbscript

// Raw header
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff

// How to send the response header with PHP
header("X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff");

// How to send the response header with Apache (.htaccess)
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff"
</IfModule>

// How to send the response header with Express.js
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    res.header("X-Content-Type-Options", "nosniff");
    next();
});

So if you try to load for example a HTML document as external script resource (the src attribute of HTMLScriptElement), the browser will refuse it.

Strict-Transport-Security

To take advantage of this security header, the current webpage must be accessed over HTTPS. In this case the Strict-Transport-Security header force secure connections to the server. This prevents losing session data stored in cookies. Also prevents users to access website in case the server's TLS certificate is not trusted. Browser support: IE 11+, Chrome 4+, Firefox 4+, Opera 12+, Safari 7+. Accepts following directives:

max-age: Required. The number of seconds that browser should force the connection over HTTPS.
includeSubDomains: Optional. If present, tells to the browser that the policy applies to current host and to all host's subdomains.
preload: Optional. Not part of the specification.

// Raw header
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000
// or
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains

// How to send the response header with PHP
header("Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000");

// How to send the response header with Apache (.htaccess)
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000"
</IfModule>

// How to send the response header with Express.js
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    res.header("Strict-Transport-Security", "max-age=31536000");
    next();
});

Content-Security-Policy

This header could affect your website in many ways, so be careful when using it. The configuration below allows loading scripts, XMLHttpRequest (AJAX), images and styles from same domain and nothing else. Browser support: Edge 12+, Firefox 4+, Chrome 14+, Safari 6+, Opera 15+

Few notes: IE 10 and 11 supports CSP through the X-Content-Security-Policy header; Safari 5.1 supported through the X-Webkit-CSP header.

// Raw header
Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'none'; script-src 'self'; connect-src 'self'; img-src 'self'; style-src 'self';

// How to send the response header with PHP
header("Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'none'; script-src 'self'; connect-src 'self'; img-src 'self'; style-src 'self';");

// How to send the response header with Apache (.htaccess)
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'none'; script-src 'self'; connect-src 'self'; img-src 'self'; style-src 'self';"
</IfModule>

// How to send the response header with Express.js
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    res.header("Content-Security-Policy", "default-src 'none'; script-src 'self'; connect-src 'self'; img-src 'self'; style-src 'self';");
    next();
});

Access-Control-Allow-Origin

The Access-Control-Allow-Origin is part of the cross-origin resource sharing specification which we discussed recently.

Public-Key-Pins

The Public Key Pinning Extension for HTTP (HPKP) is a security feature that tells a web client to associate a specific cryptographic public key with a certain web server to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks with forged certificates. Currently, the HPKP header is deprecated and its support was removed.

Referrer-Policy

Controls the value of Referer header sent with the additional requests for resources from a web page. Firefox 36+ and Opera 15+ had a full support of the specification. Edge 12+ and Safari 7.1+ supports the older draft of the spec with never, always, origin and default values. Chrome 21+ does not support same-origin, strict-origin and strict-origin-when-cross-origin values. Valid values are as follow:

"": An empty string is considered to no referrer policy, i.e. referrer fallbacks to policy defined elsewhere.
no-referrer: Means that no referrer information is sent along the requests.
no-referrer-when-downgrade: The referrer is sent to requests with better or same security (HTTP to HTTPS, HTTPS to HTTPS, HTTP to HTTP), but not less (HTTPS to HTTP). This is the default policy.
same-origin: The referrer header is sent only to same-origin requests. A request is with same-origin when the URL scheme, hostname and port of the source and destination matches.
origin: Browsers will always send the referrer header, but it will contain only the origin. The pathname and query string will be stripped-off.
strict-origin: The referrer header consists of only the origin and is sent to requests with better or same but not less security.
origin-when-cross-origin: The referrer is always sent, but contain only the origin if a request is cross-origin. Otherwise, the full URL is sent.
strict-origin-when-cross-origin: Browsers send only the origin as a referrer to cross-origin requests and the full URL to those with same-origin, but no referrer is sent to less secure destinations.
unsafe-url: A full URL, without parameters, is sent along both the same-origin and cross-origin requests.

// Raw header
Referrer-Policy: origin-when-cross-origin

// PHP
header("Referrer-Policy: origin-when-cross-origin");

// Apache
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set Referrer-Policy "origin-when-cross-origin"
</IfModule>

// nginx
add_header Referrer-Policy "origin-when-cross-origin"

// Express.js
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    res.header("Referrer-Policy", "origin-when-cross-origin");
    next();
});

Expect-CT

Certificate Transparency policy means that user-agents, e.g. browsers should block an access to a website with a certificate that is not registered in public CT logs (after October 2017). Omitting the enforce directive will make it work only in report-only mode. In the other side, the report-uri directive is meaningless when used together with the enforce directive.

max-age: The time, in seconds, that the user-agent should regard the host received as an Expect-CT Host.
report-uri: An optional directive that indicates the URI to which the user-agent should report Expect-CT failures.
enforce: An optional, valueless directive that, if present, signals to the user-agent to block future requests that violate the CT policy.

// Raw header
Expect-CT: max-age=7776000, enforce, report-uri="http://domain.com/ct-report"

// PHP
header("Expect-CT: max-age=7776000, enforce");

// Apache
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set Expect-CT "max-age=7776000, enforce"
</IfModule>

// nginx
add_header Expect-CT "max-age=7776000, enforce"

// Express.js
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    res.header("Expect-CT", "max-age=7776000, enforce");
    next();
});

Feature-Policy

The Feature-Policy header gives a site owners an opportunity to enable and disable specific browser features and APIs. This is a list of currently supported features:

accelerometer
ambient-light-sensor
autoplay
camera
cookie
docwrite
domain
encrypted-media
fullscreen
geolocation
gyroscope
magnetometer
microphone
midi
payment
picture-in-picture
speaker
sync-script
sync-xhr
unsized-media
usb
vertical-scroll
vibrate
vr

NB » Recently, this header was renamed to Permissions-Policy in the spec.

To control the origins use the following values:

*: Any origin have an access to this feature.
'self': Only the same-origin have an access to this feature. This is the default behavior.
'none': None origin have an access to this feature.
<origin(s)>: Only the specified origins have an access to this feature.

Feature-Policy: camera 'none'; fullscreen 'self'; geolocation *; microphone 'self' https://example.com

Permissions-Policy

This specification used to be named Feature Policy. This is a list of currently policy-controlled features:

accelerometer
ambient-light-sensor
autoplay
battery
camera
cross-origin-isolated
display-capture
document-domain
encrypted-media
execution-while-not-rendered
execution-while-out-of-viewport
fullscreen
geolocation
gyroscope
magnetometer
microphone
midi
navigation-override
payment
picture-in-picture
publickey-credentials-get
screen-wake-lock
sync-script
sync-xhr
usb
vertical-scroll
web-share
xr-spatial-tracking

Permissions-Policy: camera=(), fullscreen=self, geolocation=*, microphone=(self "https://example.com")

Clear-Site-Data

The Clear-Site-Data header clears browser data for requested origin. The following directives are supported:

"*" (wildcard): clear all types of data
"cache": clears browser cache
"cookies": clear all browser cookies on entire domain, including subdomains
"storage": clear all DOM storage, including localStorage, sessionStorage, IndexedDB, AppCache, WebSQL, Server Workers
"executionContexts": reload all browsing contexts

Clear-Site-Data: "cache", "cookies", "storage"

Cross-Origin-Resource-Policy

The HTTP Cross-Origin-Resource-Policy response header conveys a desire that the browser blocks no-cors cross-origin/cross-site requests to the given resource. Supported directives are:

same-site
same-origin
cross-origin

Cross-Origin-Resource-Policy: same-site

Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy

The HTTP Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy (COEP) response header prevents a document from loading any cross-origin resources that don't explicitly grant the document permission (using CORP or CORS). Supported directives are:

unsafe-none: This is the default value. Allows the document to fetch cross-origin resources without giving explicit permission through the CORS protocol or the Cross-Origin-Resource-Policy header.
require-corp: A document can only load resources from the same origin, or resources explicitly marked as loadable from another origin.

Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy: require-corp

Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy

The HTTP Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy (COOP) response header allows you to ensure a top-level document does not share a browsing context group with cross-origin documents. Supported directives are:

unsafe-none: This is the default value. Allows the document to be added to its opener's browsing context group unless the opener itself has a COOP of same-origin or same-origin-allow-popups.
same-origin-allow-popups: Retains references to newly opened windows or tabs which either don't set COOP or which opt out of isolation by setting a COOP of unsafe-none.
same-origin: Isolates the browsing context exclusively to same-origin documents. Cross-origin documents are not loaded in the same browsing context.

Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy: same-origin

Conclusion

Big players as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn use the above HTTP headers as an additional layer on a defence of their architecture. So it's strongly recommended the use of security HTTP headers to make your website safer and resist of attacks. Do you want to know how secure is your website? Let's find out with a quick scan of your server response using our Headers Inspector tool.

HTTP Headers for Wordpress

Make your website more secure by using the HTTP Headers for Wordpress, and never face a cross-origin issue again. Oh yes, it's FREE.

Download HTTP Headers v1.18.3

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