How to implement HTTPS in an insufficient manner

Re:How to implement HTTPS in an insufficient manner by kijin on Thursday April 04, 2013 @07:43AM (#5492076)

> Problem number 4 is actually also relevant for HTTPS-only websites.

You're right, but I was thinking along the lines of: The reason why they don't set secure cookies is probably because they want to share state between their HTTP site and their HTTPS site.

> Also a 301 only works for one page.

You can make it work on every page. Even the query string will remain intact. POST requests are more complicated, but they are usually triggered by forms and JS on your own pages, so you have more control over that.

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
    Rewrite (.*) https://www.example.com/$1 [L]

Of course, this doesn't solve the insecure cookie problem. But again, I'm assuming that not being HTTPS-only is the root of all evils.

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Re:How to implement HTTPS in an insufficient manner by ivanr on Thursday April 04, 2013 @02:49PM (#5494510)

By the way, you will probably want to apply [B] to that rewrite rule. In order for mod_rewrite to do its thing, it has to URL-decode the path, which means that you will get decoded data in the $1 capture. In some cases, the resulting URL (after mod_rewrite) may end up being corrupted -- for example if there's a URL-encoded slash or question mark. The [B] flag tells mod_rewrite to URL-encode backreferences. The process is not guaranteed to end up with the same URL, but with [B] it is at least a bit safer.

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Re:How to implement HTTPS in an insufficient manner by lucb1e on Thursday April 04, 2013 @08:32AM (#5492206)

Of course you can activate the 301 on all pages, I actually assumed that, but it was about the cookie that can be stolen via problem #4.

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