RFC 6797
HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)
12. User Agent Implementation Advice
This section is non-normative. In order to provide users and web sites more effective protection, as well as controls for managing their UA's caching of HSTS Policy, UA implementers should consider including features such as the following:12.1. No User Recourse
Failing secure connection establishment on any warnings or errors (per Section 8.4 ("Errors in Secure Transport Establishment")) should be done with "no user recourse". This means that the user should not be presented with a dialog giving her the option to proceed. Rather, it should be treated similarly to a server error where there is nothing further the user can do with respect to interacting with the target web application, other than wait and retry. Essentially, "any warnings or errors" means anything that would cause the UA implementation to announce to the user that something is not entirely correct with the connection establishment. Not doing this, i.e., allowing user recourse such as "clicking through warning/error dialogs", is a recipe for a man-in-the-middle attack. If a web application issues an HSTS Policy, then it is implicitly opting into the "no user recourse" approach, whereby all certificate errors or warnings cause a connection termination, with no chance to "fool" users into making the wrong decision and compromising themselves.12.2. User-Declared HSTS Policy
A user-declared HSTS Policy is the ability for users to explicitly declare a given domain name as representing an HSTS Host, thus seeding it as a Known HSTS Host before any actual interaction with it. This would help protect against the bootstrap MITM vulnerability as discussed in Section 14.6 ("Bootstrap MITM Vulnerability").
NOTE: Such a feature is difficult to get right on a per-site basis.
See the discussion of "rewrite rules" in Section 5.5 of
[ForceHTTPS]. For example, arbitrary web sites may not
materialize all their URIs using the "https" scheme and thus
could "break" if a UA were to attempt to access the site
exclusively using such URIs. Also note that this feature
would complement, but is independent of, an "HSTS pre-loaded
list" feature (see Section 12.3).
12.3. HSTS Pre-Loaded List
An HSTS pre-loaded list is a facility whereby web site administrators
can have UAs pre-configured with HSTS Policy for their site(s) by the
UA vendor(s) -- a so-called "pre-loaded list" -- in a manner similar
to how root CA certificates are embedded in browsers "at the
factory". This would help protect against the bootstrap MITM
vulnerability (Section 14.6).
NOTE: Such a facility would complement a "user-declared HSTS Policy"
feature (Section 12.2).
12.4. Disallow Mixed Security Context Loads
"Mixed security context" loads happen when a web application
resource, fetched by the UA over a secure transport, subsequently
causes the fetching of one or more other resources without using
secure transport. This is also generally referred to as "mixed
content" loads (see Section 5.3 ("Mixed Content") in
[W3C.REC-wsc-ui-20100812]) but should not be confused with the same
"mixed content" term that is also used in the context of markup
languages such as XML and HTML.
NOTE: In order to provide behavioral uniformity across UA
implementations, the notion of mixed security context will
require further standardization work, e.g., to define the
term(s) more clearly and to define specific behaviors with
respect to it.
12.5. HSTS Policy Deletion
HSTS Policy deletion is the ability to delete a UA's cached HSTS
Policy on a per-HSTS Host basis.
NOTE: Adding such a feature should be done very carefully in both
the user interface and security senses. Deleting a cache
entry for a Known HSTS Host should be a very deliberate and
well-considered act -- it shouldn't be something that users
get used to doing as a matter of course: e.g., just "clicking
through" in order to get work done. Also, implementations
need to guard against allowing an attacker to inject code,
e.g., ECMAscript, into the UA that silently and
programmatically removes entries from the UA's cache of Known
HSTS Hosts.
13. Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA): Dependency
and Migration
Textual domain names on the modern Internet may contain one or more
"internationalized" domain name labels. Such domain names are
referred to as "internationalized domain names" (IDNs). The
specification suites defining IDNs and the protocols for their use
are named "Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA)".
At this time, there are two such specification suites: IDNA2008
[RFC5890] and its predecessor IDNA2003 [RFC3490].
IDNA2008 obsoletes IDNA2003, but there are differences between the
two specifications, and thus there can be differences in processing
(e.g., converting) domain name labels that have been registered under
one from those registered under the other. There will be a
transition period of some time during which IDNA2003-based domain
name labels will exist in the wild. In order to facilitate their
IDNA transition, user agents SHOULD implement IDNA2008 [RFC5890] and
MAY implement [RFC5895] (see also Section 7 of [RFC5894]) or [UTS46].
If a user agent does not implement IDNA2008, the user agent MUST
implement IDNA2003.
14. Security Considerations
This specification concerns the expression, conveyance, and
enforcement of the HSTS Policy. The overall HSTS Policy threat
model, including addressed and unaddressed threats, is given in
Section 2.3 ("Threat Model").
Additionally, the sections below discuss operational ramifications of
the HSTS Policy, provide feature rationale, discuss potential HSTS
Policy misuse, and highlight some known vulnerabilities in the HSTS
Policy regime.
14.1. Underlying Secure Transport Considerations
This specification is fashioned to be independent of the secure
transport underlying HTTP. However, the threat analysis and
requirements in Section 2 ("Overview") in fact presume TLS or SSL as
the underlying secure transport. Thus, employment of HSTS in the
context of HTTP running over some other secure transport protocol
would require assessment of that secure transport protocol's security
model in conjunction with the specifics of how HTTP is layered over it in order to assess HSTS's subsequent security properties in that context.14.2. Non-Conformant User Agent Implications
Non-conformant user agents ignore the Strict-Transport-Security header field; thus, non-conformant user agents do not address the threats described in Section 2.3.1 ("Threats Addressed"). This means that the web application and its users wielding non-conformant UAs will be vulnerable to both of the following: o Passive network attacks due to web site development and deployment bugs: For example, if the web application contains any insecure references (e.g., "http") to the web application server, and if not all of its cookies are flagged as "Secure", then its cookies will be vulnerable to passive network sniffing and, potentially, subsequent misuse of user credentials. o Active network attacks: For example, if an attacker is able to place a "man in the middle", secure transport connection attempts will likely yield warnings to the user, but without HSTS Policy being enforced, the present common practice is to allow the user to "click through" and proceed. This renders the user and possibly the web application open to abuse by such an attacker. This is essentially the status quo for all web applications and their users in the absence of HSTS Policy. Since web application providers typically do not control the type or version of UAs their web applications interact with, the implication is that HSTS Host deployers must generally exercise the same level of care to avoid web site development and deployment bugs (see Section 2.3.1.3) as they would if they were not asserting HSTS Policy.14.3. Ramifications of HSTS Policy Establishment Only over Error-Free Secure Transport
The user agent processing model defined in Section 8 ("User Agent Processing Model") stipulates that a host is initially noted as a Known HSTS Host, or that updates are made to a Known HSTS Host's cached information, only if the UA receives the STS header field over a secure transport connection having no underlying secure transport errors or warnings.
The rationale behind this is that if there is a "man in the middle" (MITM) -- whether a legitimately deployed proxy or an illegitimate entity -- it could cause various mischief (see also Appendix A ("Design Decision Notes") item 3, as well as Section 14.6 ("Bootstrap MITM Vulnerability")); for example: o Unauthorized notation of the host as a Known HSTS Host, potentially leading to a denial-of-service situation if the host does not uniformly offer its services over secure transport (see also Section 14.5 ("Denial of Service")). o Resetting the time to live for the host's designation as a Known HSTS Host by manipulating the max-age header field parameter value that is returned to the UA. If max-age is returned as zero, this will cause the host to cease being regarded as a Known HSTS Host by the UA, leading to either insecure connections to the host or possibly denial of service if the host delivers its services only over secure transport. However, this means that if a UA is "behind" a MITM non-transparent TLS proxy -- within a corporate intranet, for example -- and interacts with an unknown HSTS Host beyond the proxy, the user could possibly be presented with the legacy secure connection error dialogs. Even if the risk is accepted and the user "clicks through", the host will not be noted as an HSTS Host. Thus, as long as the UA is behind such a proxy, the user will be vulnerable and will possibly be presented with the legacy secure connection error dialogs for as-yet unknown HSTS Hosts. Once the UA successfully connects to an unknown HSTS Host over error- free secure transport, the host will be noted as a Known HSTS Host. This will result in the failure of subsequent connection attempts from behind interfering proxies. The above discussion relates to the recommendation in Section 12 ("User Agent Implementation Advice") that the secure connection be terminated with "no user recourse" whenever there are warnings and errors and the host is a Known HSTS Host. Such a posture protects users from "clicking through" security warnings and putting themselves at risk.14.4. The Need for includeSubDomains
Without the includeSubDomains directive, a web application would not be able to adequately protect so-called "domain cookies" (even if these cookies have their "Secure" flag set and thus are conveyed only on secure channels). These are cookies the web application expects UAs to return to any and all subdomains of the web application.
For example, suppose example.com represents the top-level DNS name
for a web application. Further suppose that this cookie is set for
the entire example.com domain, i.e., it is a "domain cookie", and it
has its Secure flag set. Suppose example.com is a Known HSTS Host
for this UA, but the includeSubDomains directive is not set.
Now, if an attacker causes the UA to request a subdomain name that is
unlikely to already exist in the web application, such as
"https://uxdhbpahpdsf.example.com/", but that the attacker has
managed to register in the DNS and point at an HTTP server under the
attacker's control, then:
1. The UA is unlikely to already have an HSTS Policy established for
"uxdhbpahpdsf.example.com".
2. The HTTP request sent to uxdhbpahpdsf.example.com will include
the Secure-flagged domain cookie.
3. If "uxdhbpahpdsf.example.com" returns a certificate during TLS
establishment, and the user "clicks through" any warning that
might be presented (it is possible, but not certain, that one may
obtain a requisite certificate for such a domain name such that a
warning may or may not appear), then the attacker can obtain the
Secure-flagged domain cookie that's ostensibly being protected.
Without the "includeSubDomains" directive, HSTS is unable to protect
such Secure-flagged domain cookies.
14.5. Denial of Service
HSTS could be used to mount certain forms of Denial-of-Service (DoS)
attacks against web sites. A DoS attack is an attack in which one or
more network entities target a victim entity and attempt to prevent
the victim from doing useful work. This section discusses such
scenarios in terms of HSTS, though this list is not exhaustive. See
also [RFC4732] for a discussion of overall Internet DoS
considerations.
o Web applications available over HTTP
There is an opportunity for perpetrating DoS attacks with web
applications (or critical portions of them) that are available
only over HTTP without secure transport, if attackers can cause
UAs to set HSTS Policy for such web applications' host(s).
This is because once the HSTS Policy is set for a web
application's host in a UA, the UA will only use secure transport
to communicate with the host. If the host is not using secure
transport or is not using it for critical portions of its web
application, then the web application will be rendered unusable
for the UA's user.
NOTE: This is a use case for UAs to offer an "HSTS Policy
deletion" feature as noted in Section 12.5 ("HSTS Policy
Deletion").
An HSTS Policy can be set for a victim host in various ways:
* If the web application has an HTTP response splitting
vulnerability [CWE-113] (which can be abused in order to
facilitate "HTTP header injection").
* If an attacker can spoof a redirect from an insecure victim
site, e.g., <http://example.com/> to <https://example.com/>,
where the latter is attacker-controlled and has an apparently
valid certificate. In this situation, the attacker can then
set an HSTS Policy for example.com and also for all subdomains
of example.com.
* If an attacker can convince users to manually configure HSTS
Policy for a victim host. This assumes that their UAs offer
such a capability (see Section 12 ("User Agent Implementation
Advice")). Alternatively, if such UA configuration is
scriptable, then an attacker can cause UAs to execute his
script and set HSTS Policies for whichever desired domains.
o Inadvertent use of includeSubDomains
The includeSubDomains directive instructs UAs to automatically
regard all subdomains of the given HSTS Host as Known HSTS Hosts.
If any such subdomains do not support properly configured secure
transport, then they will be rendered unreachable from such UAs.
14.6. Bootstrap MITM Vulnerability
Bootstrap MITM (man-in-the-middle) vulnerability is a vulnerability
that users and HSTS Hosts encounter in the situation where the user
manually enters, or follows a link, to an unknown HSTS Host using an
"http" URI rather than an "https" URI. Because the UA uses an
insecure channel in the initial attempt to interact with the
specified server, such an initial interaction is vulnerable to
various attacks (see Section 5.3 of [ForceHTTPS]).
NOTE: There are various features/facilities that UA implementations
may employ in order to mitigate this vulnerability. Please
see Section 12 ("User Agent Implementation Advice").
14.7. Network Time Attacks
Active network attacks can subvert network time protocols (such as the Network Time Protocol (NTP) [RFC5905]) -- making HSTS less effective against clients that trust NTP or lack a real time clock. Network time attacks are beyond the scope of this specification. Note that modern operating systems use NTP by default. See also Section 2.10 of [RFC4732].14.8. Bogus Root CA Certificate Phish plus DNS Cache Poisoning Attack
An attacker could conceivably obtain users' login credentials belonging to a victim HSTS-protected web application via a bogus root CA certificate phish plus DNS cache poisoning attack. For example, the attacker could first convince users of a victim web application (which is protected by HSTS Policy) to install the attacker's version of a root CA certificate purporting (falsely) to represent the CA of the victim web application. This might be accomplished by sending the users a phishing email message with a link to such a certificate, which their browsers may offer to install if clicked on. Then, if the attacker can perform an attack on the users' DNS servers, (e.g., via cache poisoning) and turn on HSTS Policy for their fake web application, the affected users' browsers would access the attacker's web application rather than the legitimate web application. This type of attack leverages vectors that are outside of the scope of HSTS. However, the feasibility of such threats can be mitigated by including in a web application's overall deployment approach appropriate employment, in addition to HSTS, of security facilities such as DNS Security Extensions [RFC4033], plus techniques to block email phishing and fake certificate injection.14.9. Creative Manipulation of HSTS Policy Store
Since an HSTS Host may select its own host name and subdomains thereof, and this information is cached in the HSTS Policy store of conforming UAs, it is possible for those who control one or more HSTS Hosts to encode information into domain names they control and cause such UAs to cache this information as a matter of course in the process of noting the HSTS Host. This information can be retrieved by other hosts through cleverly constructed and loaded web resources, causing the UA to send queries to (variations of) the encoded domain names. Such queries can reveal whether the UA had previously visited the original HSTS Host (and subdomains).
Such a technique could potentially be abused as yet another form of "web tracking" [WebTracking].14.10. Internationalized Domain Names
Internet security relies in part on the DNS and the domain names it hosts. Domain names are used by users to identify and connect to Internet hosts and other network resources. For example, Internet security is compromised if a user entering an internationalized domain name (IDN) is connected to different hosts based on different interpretations of the IDN. The processing models specified in this specification assume that the domain names they manipulate are IDNA-canonicalized, and that the canonicalization process correctly performed all appropriate IDNA and Unicode validations and character list testing per the requisite specifications (e.g., as noted in Section 10 ("Domain Name IDNA- Canonicalization")). These steps are necessary in order to avoid various potentially compromising situations. In brief, examples of issues that could stem from lack of careful and consistent Unicode and IDNA validations include unexpected processing exceptions, truncation errors, and buffer overflows, as well as false-positive and/or false-negative domain name matching results. Any of the foregoing issues could possibly be leveraged by attackers in various ways. Additionally, IDNA2008 [RFC5890] differs from IDNA2003 [RFC3490] in terms of disallowed characters and character mapping conventions. This situation can also lead to false-positive and/or false-negative domain name matching results, resulting in, for example, users possibly communicating with unintended hosts or not being able to reach intended hosts. For details, refer to the Security Considerations sections of [RFC5890], [RFC5891], and [RFC3490], as well as the specifications they normatively reference. Additionally, [RFC5894] provides detailed background and rationale for IDNA2008 in particular, as well as IDNA and its issues in general, and should be consulted in conjunction with the former specifications.
15. IANA Considerations
Below is the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Permanent Message Header Field registration information per [RFC3864]. Header field name: Strict-Transport-Security Applicable protocol: http Status: standard Author/Change controller: IETF Specification document(s): this one16. References
16.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [RFC2616] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999. [RFC2818] Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818, May 2000. [RFC3490] Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello, "Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)", RFC 3490, March 2003. [RFC3864] Klyne, G., Nottingham, M., and J. Mogul, "Registration Procedures for Message Header Fields", BCP 90, RFC 3864, September 2004. [RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 3986, January 2005. [RFC5246] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008. [RFC5890] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA): Definitions and Document Framework", RFC 5890, August 2010. [RFC5891] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA): Protocol", RFC 5891, August 2010.
[RFC5895] Resnick, P. and P. Hoffman, "Mapping Characters for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) 2008", RFC 5895, September 2010. [RFC6698] Hoffman, P. and J. Schlyter, "The DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol: TLSA", RFC 6698, August 2012. [UTS46] Davis, M. and M. Suignard, "Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing", Unicode Technical Standard #46, <http://unicode.org/reports/tr46/>. [Unicode] The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard", <http://www.unicode.org/versions/latest/>. [W3C.REC-html401-19991224] Raggett, D., Le Hors, A., and I. Jacobs, "HTML 4.01 Specification", World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-html401-19991224, December 1999, <http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/>.16.2. Informative References
[Aircrack-ng] d'Otreppe, T., "Aircrack-ng", Accessed: 11-Jul-2010, <http://www.aircrack-ng.org/>. [BeckTews09] Beck, M. and E. Tews, "Practical Attacks Against WEP and WPA", Second ACM Conference on Wireless Network Security Zurich, Switzerland, 2009, <http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1514286>. [CWE-113] "CWE-113: Improper Neutralization of CRLF Sequences in HTTP Headers ('HTTP Response Splitting')", Common Weakness Enumeration <http://cwe.mitre.org/>, The Mitre Corporation <http://www.mitre.org/>, <http://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/113.html>. [Firesheep] Various, "Firesheep", Wikipedia Online, ongoing, <https:// secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/ index.php?title=Firesheep&oldid=517474182>.
[ForceHTTPS] Jackson, C. and A. Barth, "ForceHTTPS: Protecting High- Security Web Sites from Network Attacks", In Proceedings of the 17th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2008) , 2008, <https://crypto.stanford.edu/forcehttps/>. [GoodDhamijaEtAl05] Good, N., Dhamija, R., Grossklags, J., Thaw, D., Aronowitz, S., Mulligan, D., and J. Konstan, "Stopping Spyware at the Gate: A User Study of Privacy, Notice and Spyware", In Proceedings of Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS) Pittsburgh, PA, USA, July 2005, <http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/ Spyware_at_the_Gate.pdf>. [HTTP1_1-UPD] Fielding, R., Ed., and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing", Work in Progress, October 2012. [JacksonBarth2008] Jackson, C. and A. Barth, "Beware of Finer-Grained Origins", Web 2.0 Security and Privacy Workshop, Oakland, CA, USA, 2008, <http://seclab.stanford.edu/websec/origins/fgo.pdf>. [OWASP-TLSGuide] Coates, M., Wichers, D., Boberski, M., and T. Reguly, "Transport Layer Protection Cheat Sheet", Accessed: 11-Jul-2010, <http://www.owasp.org/index.php/ Transport_Layer_Protection_Cheat_Sheet>. [RFC1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, November 1987. [RFC2560] Myers, M., Ankney, R., Malpani, A., Galperin, S., and C. Adams, "X.509 Internet Public Key Infrastructure Online Certificate Status Protocol - OCSP", RFC 2560, June 1999. [RFC4033] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S. Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements", RFC 4033, March 2005. [RFC4732] Handley, M., Rescorla, E., and IAB, "Internet Denial-of- Service Considerations", RFC 4732, December 2006.
[RFC4949] Shirey, R., "Internet Security Glossary, Version 2", RFC 4949, August 2007. [RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226, May 2008. [RFC5280] Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S., Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, May 2008. [RFC5894] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA): Background, Explanation, and Rationale", RFC 5894, August 2010. [RFC5905] Mills, D., Martin, J., Burbank, J., and W. Kasch, "Network Time Protocol Version 4: Protocol and Algorithms Specification", RFC 5905, June 2010. [RFC6066] Eastlake, D., "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Extensions: Extension Definitions", RFC 6066, January 2011. [RFC6101] Freier, A., Karlton, P., and P. Kocher, "The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Protocol Version 3.0", RFC 6101, August 2011. [RFC6125] Saint-Andre, P. and J. Hodges, "Representation and Verification of Domain-Based Application Service Identity within Internet Public Key Infrastructure Using X.509 (PKIX) Certificates in the Context of Transport Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 6125, March 2011. [RFC6265] Barth, A., "HTTP State Management Mechanism", RFC 6265, April 2011. [RFC6454] Barth, A., "The Web Origin Concept", RFC 6454, December 2011. [SunshineEgelmanEtAl09] Sunshine, J., Egelman, S., Almuhimedi, H., Atri, N., and L. Cranor, "Crying Wolf: An Empirical Study of SSL Warning Effectiveness", In Proceedings of 18th USENIX Security Symposium Montreal, Canada, August 2009, <http:// www.usenix.org/events/sec09/tech/full_papers/ sunshine.pdf>.
[W3C.REC-wsc-ui-20100812] Roessler, T. and A. Saldhana, "Web Security Context: User Interface Guidelines", World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-wsc-ui-20100812, August 2010, <http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/REC-wsc-ui-20100812>. [WebTracking] Schmucker, N., "Web Tracking", SNET2 Seminar Paper - Summer Term, 2011, <http://www.snet.tu-berlin.de/ fileadmin/fg220/courses/SS11/snet-project/ web-tracking_schmuecker.pdf>.
Appendix A. Design Decision Notes
This appendix documents various design decisions. 1. Cookies aren't appropriate for HSTS Policy expression, as they are potentially mutable (while stored in the UA); therefore, an HTTP header field is employed. 2. We chose to not attempt to specify how "mixed security context loads" (also known as "mixed content loads") are handled, due to UA implementation considerations as well as classification difficulties. 3. An HSTS Host may update UA notions of HSTS Policy via new HSTS header field parameter values. We chose to have UAs honor the "freshest" information received from a server because there is the chance of a web site sending out an erroneous HSTS Policy, such as a multi-year max-age value, and/or an incorrect includeSubDomains directive. If the HSTS Host couldn't correct such errors over protocol, it would require some form of annunciation to users and manual intervention on the users' part, which could be a non-trivial problem for both web application providers and their users. 4. HSTS Hosts are identified only via domain names -- explicit IP address identification of all forms is excluded. This is for simplification and also is in recognition of various issues with using direct IP address identification in concert with PKI-based security. 5. The max-age approach of having the HSTS Host provide a simple integer number of seconds for a cached HSTS Policy time-to-live value, as opposed to an approach of stating an expiration time in the future, was chosen for various reasons. Amongst the reasons are no need for clock synchronization, no need to define date and time value syntaxes (specification simplicity), and implementation simplicity. 6. In determining whether port mapping was to be employed, the option of merely refusing to dereference any URL with an explicit port was considered. It was felt, though, that the possibility that the URI to be dereferenced is incorrect (and there is indeed a valid HTTPS server at that port) is worth the small cost of possibly wasted HTTPS fetches to HTTP servers.
Appendix B. Differences between HSTS Policy and Same-Origin Policy
HSTS Policy has the following primary characteristics: HSTS Policy stipulates requirements for the security characteristics of UA-to-host connection establishment, on a per-host basis. Hosts explicitly declare HSTS Policy to UAs. Conformant UAs are obliged to implement hosts' declared HSTS Policies. HSTS Policy is conveyed over protocol from the host to the UA. The UA maintains a cache of Known HSTS Hosts. UAs apply HSTS Policy whenever making an HTTP connection to a Known HSTS Host, regardless of host port number; i.e., it applies to all ports on a Known HSTS Host. Hosts are unable to affect this aspect of HSTS Policy. Hosts may optionally declare that their HSTS Policy applies to all subdomains of their host domain name. In contrast, the Same-Origin Policy (SOP) [RFC6454] has the following primary characteristics: An origin is the scheme, host, and port of a URI identifying a resource. A UA may dereference a URI, thus loading a representation of the resource the URI identifies. UAs label resource representations with their origins, which are derived from their URIs. The SOP refers to a collection of principles, implemented within UAs, governing the isolation of and communication between resource representations within the UA, as well as resource representations' access to network resources. In summary, although both HSTS Policy and SOP are enforced by UAs, HSTS Policy is optionally declared by hosts and is not origin-based, while the SOP applies to all resource representations loaded from all hosts by conformant UAs.
Appendix C. Acknowledgments
The authors thank Devdatta Akhawe, Michael Barrett, Ben Campbell, Tobias Gondrom, Paul Hoffman, Murray Kucherawy, Barry Leiba, James Manger, Alexey Melnikov, Haevard Molland, Yoav Nir, Yngve N. Pettersen, Laksh Raghavan, Marsh Ray, Julian Reschke, Eric Rescorla, Tom Ritter, Peter Saint-Andre, Brian Smith, Robert Sparks, Maciej Stachowiak, Sid Stamm, Andy Steingrubl, Brandon Sterne, Martin Thomson, Daniel Veditz, and Jan Wrobel, as well as all the websec working group participants and others for their various reviews and helpful contributions. Thanks to Julian Reschke for his elegant rewriting of the effective request URI text, which he did when incorporating the ERU notion into the updates to HTTP/1.1 [HTTP1_1-UPD]. Subsequently, the ERU text in this spec was lifted from Julian's work in the updated HTTP/1.1 (part 1) specification and adapted to the [RFC2616] ABNF.Authors' Addresses
Jeff Hodges PayPal 2211 North First Street San Jose, California 95131 US EMail: Jeff.Hodges@PayPal.com Collin Jackson Carnegie Mellon University EMail: collin.jackson@sv.cmu.edu Adam Barth Google, Inc. EMail: ietf@adambarth.com URI: http://www.adambarth.com/