Upgrade Insecure Requests

1. Introduction

This section is not normative.

Increasingly, we encourage authors to transition their sites and applications away from insecure transport, and onto encrypted and authenticated connections [WEB-HTTPS]. While this migration has significant advantages for both authors and users, it isn’t without negative side-effects.

Most notably, mixed content checking [MIX] has the potential to cause real headache for administrators tasked with moving substantial amounts of legacy content onto HTTPS. In particular, going through old content and rewriting resource URLs manually is a huge undertaking. Moreover, it’s often the case that truly legacy content is difficult or impossible to update. Consider the BBC’s archived websites [BBC-ARCHIVE], or the New York Times' hard-coded URLs [NYT-HTTPS].

We should remove this burden from site authors by allowing them to assert to a user agent that they intend a site to load only secure resources, and that insecure URLs ought to be treated as though they had been replaced with equivalent secure URLs.

This document defines a new Content Security Policy directive, upgrade-insecure-requests, through which authors can make this assertion. Note: Delivering the policy as a header allows an administrator to easily opt a set of pages into the upgrade mechanism without touching their source code individually. The legacy content examples above would not be feasible with an approach that inlined the policy into HTML, for example.

1.1. Goals

The overarching goal is to reduce the burden of migrating websites from insecure origins by reducing the negative side effects of mixed content blocking [MIX].

If we assume that authors do the server-side legwork (obtaining a certificate, configuring the server, setting up redirects), and that authors also ensure that both first- and third-party content is accessible at the same host and path on a secure scheme, then the following statements ought to hold after implementing this feature:

1. Authors should be able to ensure that all content requested by a given page loads successfully, and securely. Mixed content blocking should not break pages as a result of migrating to a secure origin.

   Note: This requirement is not met by Mixed Content’s strict mode, which makes something like the opposite assertion.

2. As a result of #1, the user agent should not degrade any security indicators related to requesting mixed content, as no insecure content should be requested.
3. Authors should be able to ensure that all internal links correctly send users to the site’s secure address, and not to its pre-migration insecure address.
4. Authors should be able to achieve all these goals without editing a site’s content. This is particularly important for archived content and legacy systems for which maintenance is difficult enough, never mind upgrades.
5. Authors should be able to pursue a gradual transition from insecure to secure, serving secure resources to clients that support upgrades, while retaining insecure resources for clients that don’t.

Note: The mechanism defined here does not intend to supplant Strict Transport Security [RFC6797]. See § 7.2 Relation to HSTS for details.

1.2. Examples

1.2.1. Non-navigational Upgrades

Content-Security-Policy: upgrade-insecure-requests

<img src="http://example.com/image.png">
<img src="http://not-example.com/image.png">

<img src="https://example.com/image.png">
<img src="https://not-example.com/image.png">

1.2.2. Navigational Upgrades

Content-Security-Policy: upgrade-insecure-requests

<a href="http://example.com/">Home</a>

<a href="https://example.com/">Home</a>

<a href="http://not-example.com/">Home</a>

1.2.3. Failed Upgrade

<img src="http://cdn.example.com/image.png">

1.3. Recommendations

We recommend that authors who wish to ensure that user agents which support upgrade-insecure-requests are as secure as possible do the following:

1. Redirect insecure, safely upgradable requests from HTTP to HTTPS by responding with a Location header and a 307 status code.
   In Nginx, this kind of redirection might look like this:

   server {
     if ($http_upgrade_insecure_requests = "1") {
       add_header Vary Upgrade-Insecure-Requests;
       return 307 https://$host$request_uri;
     }
   }
   

   This is, of course, greatly simplified; your configuration will likely be significantly more complex.

2. Respond to potentially trustworthy URL safely upgradable requests with a upgrade-insecure-requests directive if necessary for the resource being requested.
   In Nginx, adding this directive might look like this:

   server {
     ...
   
     add_header Content-Security-Policy upgrade-insecure-requests;
   
     ...
   }
   

   This is, of course, greatly simplified; your configuration will likely be significantly more complex.

3. If the origin is HSTS-safe, then protect against SSL-stripping man-in-the-middle attacks by sending a Strict-Transport-Security header with the preload directive, and ensure that insecure content is never loaded by enabling Mixed Content’s strict mode.
   In Nginx, adding this header might look like this (note the use of the preloaded directive, which signifies that this origin’s HSTS state can be safely imported into user agents' HSTS preload lists):

   server {
     ...
   
     add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=10886400; preload"
     add_header Content-Security-Policy block-all-mixed-content;
   
     ...
   }
   

   This is, of course, greatly simplified; your configuration will likely be significantly more complex.

   Additionally, work with user agent vendors to add the origin to HSTS Preload Lists (for example, by submitting the origin to hstspreload.appspot.com).

4. If the origin is conditionally HSTS-safe, then opt-into HSTS only in response to safely upgradable requests.
   In Nginx, adding this header conditionally might look like this (note the use of map, as setting headers inside if without returning immediately is, well, iffy):

   server {
     ...
   
     map $http_https $sts {
       "1" "max-age=10886400"
     }
   
     add_header Strict-Transport-Security $sts;
   
     ...
   }
   

   This is, of course, greatly simplified; your configuration will likely be significantly more complex.

2. Key Concepts and Terminology

upgrade

A request is said to be upgraded if it is rewritten to contain a URL with a scheme of https or wss.

safely upgradable requests

A request is said to be safely upgradable if the resource representation which will be returned does not require the upgrade-insecure-requests mechanism described in this document to avoid breakage, or if the request's header list contains an Upgrade-Insecure-Requests header field with a value of 1.

HSTS-safe origin

An origin is said to be HSTS-safe if no resource representations it returns requires the the upgrade-insecure-requests mechanism described in this document to avoid breakage, and if all resource representations it returns can be served over HTTPS.

HSTS-safe origins can safely opt-into Strict-Transport-Security for all user agents, without risking broken pages for user agents which do not support upgrade-insecure-requests.

conditionally HSTS-safe origin

An origin is said to be conditionally HSTS-safe if one or more resource representations it returns requires the upgrade-insecure-requests mechanism described in this document to avoid breakage, and if all resource representations it returns can be served over HTTPS.

Conditionally HSTS-safe origins can safely opt-into Strict-Transport-Security only for user agents which support upgrade-insecure-requests.

preloadable HSTS host

A host host is a preloadable HSTS host if, when performing Known HSTS Host Domain Name Matching, host is a superdomain match for a Known HSTS Host which asserts both the includeSubDomains directive and the preload directive, or host is a congruent matchfor a Known HSTS Host which asserts the preload directive.

Note: This is a long way of saying "any host the user agent has pinned with a Strict-Transport-Security header that contained a preload directive".

The Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) notation used in § 3.1 The upgrade-insecure-requests Content Security Policy directive is specified in RFC5234. [ABNF]

3. Upgrading Insecure Resource Requests

In order to allow authors to mitigate the negative side-effects of migration away from insecure origins, authors may instruct the user agent to transparently upgrade resource requests to potentially trustworthy URL variants of the original request’s URL.

To support this instruction:

1. Environment settings objects and browsing contexts are given an insecure requests policy which has two potential values Do Not Upgrade and Upgrade. It is set to Do Not Upgrade unless otherwise specified. This policy is checked in § 4.1 Upgrade request to a potentially trustworthy URL, if appropriate in order to determine whether or not non-navigation requests and form submissions should be upgraded during fetching.
2. Environment settings objects and browsing contexts are given an upgrade insecure navigations set which contains a set of (host, port) tuples to which navigations ought to be upgraded. Its value is the empty set unless otherwise specified. This set is checked in § 4.1 Upgrade request to a potentially trustworthy URL, if appropriate in order to determine whether or not navigation requests should be upgraded.

3.1. The upgrade-insecure-requests Content Security Policy directive

A server MAY instruct a user agent to upgrade insecure requests for a particular protected resource by sending a Content-Security-Policy header [CSP] that contains a upgrade-insecure-requests directive, defined via the following ABNF grammar:

directive-name  = "upgrade-insecure-requests"
directive-value = ""

When enforcing the upgrade-insecure-requests directive:

1. Let settings be the protected resource’s incumbent settings object.
2. Set settings’s insecure requests policy to Upgrade.
3. Let tuple be a tuple of the protected resource’s URL's host and port.
4. Insert tuple into settings’s upgrade insecure navigations set.

Monitoring the upgrade-insecure-requests directive has no effect: the directive is ignored when sent via a Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only header. Authors can determine whether or not upgraded resources' original URLs were insecure via Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only. For example, Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only: default-src https:; report-uri /endpoint. See § 3.4 Reporting Upgrades for additional detail.

3.1.1. Relation to "Mixed Content"

The upgrade-insecure-requests directive results in requests being rewritten at the top of the Fetching algorithm [FETCH], as specified in § 4.1 Upgrade request to a potentially trustworthy URL, if appropriate. It’s important to note that the rewrite happens before either Mixed Content [MIX] or Content Security Policy checks take effect [CSP].

This ordering means that upgraded requests will not be flagged as mixed content. Moreover, it means that upgrade-insecure-requests’s effect takes place before the block-all-mixed-content directive would have a chance to block the request. If the former is set, the latter is effectively a no-op.

We recommend that authors set one directive or the other, as outlined in § 1.3 Recommendations.

3.2. Feature Detecting Clients Capable of Upgrading

Sites which require the upgrade mechanism laid out in this document in order to provide users with a reasonable experience over secure transit need some way to determine whether or not a particular request can safely be redirected from HTTP to HTTPS (and vice-versa). Moreover, conditionally HSTS-safe origins can only opt-into Strict-Transport-Security for supported user agents, and doing otherwise could have negative consequences for the site’s users.

Rather than relying on user-agent sniffing to make this decision, user agents can advertise their upgrade capability when making navigation requests by including an Upgrade-Insecure-Requests header field as described in § 3.2.1 The Upgrade-Insecure-Requests HTTP Request Header Field.

3.2.1. The Upgrade-Insecure-Requests HTTP Request Header Field

The Upgrade-Insecure-Requests HTTP request header field sends a signal to the server expressing the client’s preference for an encrypted and authenticated response, and that it can successfully handle the upgrade-insecure-requests directive in order to make that preference as seamless as possible to provide.

This preference is represented by the following ANBF:

"Upgrade-Insecure-Requests:" *WSP "1" *WSP

Note: Though the Upgrade-Insecure-Requests header expresses a preference, sending it via the existing Prefer header is problematic, as we expect the response from the server to use it as part of the cache key. Vary: Prefer is too broad, as discussed in w3/webappsec#216.

User agent conformance details are described in step #1 of the the § 4.1 Upgrade request to a potentially trustworthy URL, if appropriate algorithm. That step represents the following requirements:

1. User agents MUST send an Upgrade-Insecure-Requests header field along with requests for insecure URLs.

   Note: Servers can use this signal to upgrade HTTP requests to HTTPS for pages that require upgrade-insecure-requests support.

2. User agents MUST send an Upgrade-Insecure-Requests header field along with requests for potentially trustworthy URLs whose URL's host is not a preloadable HSTS host.

   Note: Servers can use the absence of this signal to downgrade HTTPS requests to HTTP for pages that require upgrade-insecure-requests support.

3. User agents SHOULD periodically send an Upgrade-Insecure-Requests header field along with requests for potentially trustworthy URLs whose URL's host is a preloadable HSTS host. For example, user agents could send an Upgrade-Insecure-Requests header field only when the asserted max-age is a few days from expiration, or only for a small percentage of requests.

   Note: preloadable HSTS hosts have asserted that they are HSTS-safe, and therefore don’t need a downgrade signal. They will need to refresh HSTS status before the asserted max-age expires, and the Upgrade-Insecure-Requests header field serves as a fine signal that HSTS could be refreshed.

When a server encounters this preference in an HTTP request’s headers, it SHOULD redirect the user to a potentially trustworthy URL variant of the resource being requested.

When a server encounters this preference in an HTTPS request’s headers, it SHOULD include a Strict-Transport-Security header in the response if the request’s host is HSTS-safe or conditionally HSTS-safe [RFC6797].

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1

HTTP/1.1 307 Moved Temporarily
Location: https://example.com/
Vary: Upgrade-Insecure-Requests

HTTP/1.1 307 Moved Temporarily
Location: https://example.com/
Cache-Control: no-store

3.3. Policy Inheritance

If a Document's incumbent settings object’s insecure requests policy is set to Upgrade, the user agent MUST ensure that all nested browsing contexts inherit the setting in the following ways:

1. When a nested browsing context context is created:
   1. If context’s embedding document’s insecure requests policy is Upgrade, then:
      1. Set context’s insecure requests policy to Upgrade.
      2. For each value in context’s embedding document’s upgrade insecure navigations set, add value to context’s upgrade insecure navigations set.
2. When creating a new Document object document in a browsing context context:
   1. If context’s insecure requests policy is Upgrade, then:
      1. Let settings be document’s incumbent settings object.
      2. Set settings’ insecure requests policy to Upgrade.
      3. For each value in context’s upgrade insecure navigations set, add value to settings’s upgrade insecure navigations set.

Likewise, when spinning up a worker, the user agent MUST ensure that it inherits the setting from the context that created it in the following ways:

1. When executing the set up a worker environment settings object algorithm, perform the following steps after the current step #4:
   5. If inherited responsible browsing context’s insecure requests policy is Upgrade, then:
      1. Set settings object’s insecure requests policy to Upgrade.
      2. For each value in inherited responsible browsing context’s upgrade insecure navigations set, add value to settings object’s upgrade insecure navigations set.

3.4. Reporting Upgrades

Upgrading insecure requests MUST not interfere with an authors' ability to track down requests that would be insecure in a user agent that does not support upgrades. To that end, upgrades MUST be performed after evaluating request against all monitored security policies, but before evaluating request against all enforced policies.

Content-Security-Policy: upgrade-insecure-requests; default-src https:
Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only: default-src https:; report-uri /endpoint

Note: This will be significantly clarified once [CSP] is rewritten in terms of [FETCH].

4. Processing Algorithms

4.1. Upgrade request to a potentially trustworthy URL, if appropriate

Given a request request, this algorithm will rewrite its URL if the client from which the request originates has opted-in to upgrades. It will also inject an Upgrade-Insecure-Requests header field header for insecure navigation requests in order to improve a server’s ability to feature-detect a client’s upgrade capabilities.

We will not upgrade cross-origin navigation requests, with the exception of form submissions. Form submissions will be upgraded to mitigate the risk of data leakage via plaintext submissions.

Note: This algorithm is called at the top of the Main Fetch algorithm.

1. If request is a navigation request, append a header named Upgrade-Insecure-Requests with a value of 1 to request’s header list if any of the following criteria are met:
   1. request’s URL is not a potentially trustworthy URL
   2. request’s URL's host is not a preloadable HSTS host

   Note: User agents can choose to append the Upgrade-Insecure-Requests header field for other requests, as discussed in § 3.2.1 The Upgrade-Insecure-Requests HTTP Request Header Field.

2. If request is a navigation request, then:
   1. If request is a form submission, skip the remaining substeps, and continue upgrading request.
   2. If request’s client's target browsing context is a nested browsing context, skip the remaining substeps and continue upgrading request.
   3. Let tuple be a tuple of request’s URL's host and port.
   4. If tuple is contained in client's upgrade insecure navigations set, then skip the remaining substeps, and continue upgrading request.
   5. Return without further modifying request.

   Note: We only upgrade top-level navigation requests for hosts that have explicitly opted-into the behavior for a particular protected resource, as described in § 1.2 Examples. Performing upgrades for top-level navigations to third-party resources brings a significantly higher potential for breakage, so we’re avoiding it for the moment. Nested navigations (via iframe, for example) affect the security status of their embedder, so we ensure that they are upgraded if necessary.

3. Let upgrade state be the result of executing § 4.2 Should insecure requests be upgraded for client? upon request’s client.
4. If upgrade state is Do Not Upgrade, return without modifying request.
5. If request’s URL's scheme is "http", set request’s URL's scheme to "https", and return.

Note: Due to [FETCH]'s recursive nature, this algorithm will upgrade insecurely-redirected requests as well as insecure initial requests.

4.2. Should insecure requests be upgraded for client?

Given an request's client client (an environment settings object), this algorithm returns Enforced Upgrade if insecure requests associated with that client should be upgraded, or Do Not Upgrade otherwise. In short, this will check the client and return the appropriate insecure requests policy set on it or its browsing context.

1. If client has a responsible document, return the value of its insecure requests policy.

   Note: This catches Documents or Workers whose policy is set directly by the upgrade-insecure-requests directive, or which have inherited the policy from an embedding document.

2. If client has a responsible browsing context, return the value of its insecure requests policy.

   Note: This catches requests triggered from detached clients. Not sure this is necessary, really, given the inheritance structure defined in § 3.3 Policy Inheritance.

3. Return Do Not Upgrade.

5. Security Considerations

5.1. Interaction with HSTS

The upgrade-insecure-requests directive does not replace the Strict-Transport-Security HTTP response header [RFC6797]. Authors who serve their site over secure transport SHOULD send that header with an appropriate max-age in order to ensure that users are not subject to SSL stripping attacks by maliciously active network attackers, or monitoring by maliciously passive network attackers.

5.2. CSP Violation Reports

When sending a violation report for an upgraded resource, user agents MUST target the Document or Worker that triggered the request, rather than the Document or Worker on which the upgrade-insecure-requests directive was set. Due to § 3.3 Policy Inheritance, the latter might be a cross-origin ancestor of the former, and sending violation reports to that set of reporting endpoints could leak data in unexpected ways.

Likewise, the SecurityPolicyViolationEvent MUST NOT target any Document other than the one which triggered the request, for the same reasons.

6. Performance Considerations

The upgrade mechanism specified here adds Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1\r\n to every outgoing navigation request to non-preloadable HSTS hosts (as discussed at length on public-webappsec@, and w3c/webappsec#216). The advantages and intent of the header are laid out in § 3.2.1 The Upgrade-Insecure-Requests HTTP Request Header Field, and though we’ve taken some steps to ensure that it won’t be a permanent fixture of the platform (by carving out preloadable HSTS hosts), it’s going to be a long, long time before the header vanishes.

User agents are encouraged to find additional carveouts, and implement them.

7. Authoring Considerations

7.1. Legacy Clients

Legacy clients which do support mixed content blocking [MIX], but do not support the upgrade-insecure-requests directive will continue to have a suboptimal experience on pages containing insecure URLs. Authors SHOULD ensure that they collect violation reports in order to determine which resources are most problematic for their users, and SHOULD use that information to prioritize fixes for URLs in legacy content that users will most likely request.

7.2. Relation to HSTS

The mechanism specified here deals only with the security policy for a specific protected resource. It does not deprecate, replace, or in any way reduce the value of the Strict-Transport-Security HTTP response header [RFC6797]. Authors can and should continue to use that header to ensure that their users are not subject to SSL stripping downgrade attacks, as the upgrade-insecure-requests directive will not ensure that users visiting your site via links on third-party sites will be upgraded to HTTPS for the top-level navigation.

Likewise, the Strict-Transport-Security header does not imply the behavior that upgrade-insecure-requests activates. It only ensures that resources requested from an origin will never hit the network insecurely.

We are intentionally keeping these concepts distinct, as authors may choose to activate one or the other behavior, but ought not be forced to bind them together.

8. IANA Considerations

8.1. Upgrade-Insecure-Requests Header

The permanent message header field registry should be updated with the following registration: [RFC3864]

Header field name

Upgrade-Insecure-Requests

Applicable protocol

http

Status

standard

Author/Change controller

W3C

Specification document

This specification (See § 3.2.1 The Upgrade-Insecure-Requests HTTP Request Header Field)

8.2. Upgrade-Insecure-Requests Directive

The Content Security Policy Directive registry should be updated with the following registration: [RFC7762]

Directive name

Upgrade-Insecure-Requests

Reference

This specification (See § 3.1 The upgrade-insecure-requests Content Security Policy directive)

9. Acknowledgements

Anne van Kesteren helped ensure that the initial draft of this document was sane. Peter Eckersley and Daniel Kahn Gillmor clarified the problem space, and helped point out the impact.