HTTP Strict Transport Security

HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) is a policy mechanism that helps to protect websites against man-in-the-middle attacks such as protocol downgrade attacks and cookie hijacking.

SUSE Manager allows enabling HSTS, to enable it for a SUSE Manager Server:

Procedure

  1. Create new configuration file in /etc/apache2/conf.d/<filename>.conf, for example /etc/apache2/conf.d/zz-spacewalk-www-custom.conf.

  2. Add line Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains"

  3. Restart Apache with systemctl restart apache2

To enable it for SUSE Manager Proxies:

Procedure

  1. Create new configuration file in /etc/apache2/conf.d/<filename>.conf, for example /etc/apache2/conf.dz/zz-spacewalk-proxy-custom.conf.

  2. Add line Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains"

  3. Restart Apache with systemctl restart apache2

When naming the new config file <filename>.conf, make sure it is loaded at the right time. For example, to override something defined in spacewalk-www.conf the new file needs to be alphabetically after this file. For more information about how Apache loads files, see https://httpd.apache.org/docs.

When HSTS is enabled while using the default SSL certificate generated by SUSE Manager or a self-signed certificate, browsers will refuse to connect with HTTPS unless the CA used to sign such certificates is trusted by the browser. If you are using the SSL certificate generated by SUSE Manager, you can trust it by importing the file located at http://<SERVER-HOSTNAME>/pub/RHN-ORG-TRUSTED-SSL-CERT to the browsers of all users.