Network

HSTS directs the browser to use HTTPS for certain domains (optionally subdomains). This mitigates some MitM attacks by upgrading HTTP connections to HTTPS. HSTS Preloading The native implementation of HSTS communicates the HSTS policy to the browser via an HTTP response header Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains. HSTS requires a user to visit a website once before HSTS protection is cached. But what if HTTP is used on the first visit or a user clears their cache frequently? An attacker can still redirect the user to a malicious site by altering the response. ...

What is WPAD? WPAD stands for Windows Proxy Auto-Discovery. It is a protocol to obtain the URL for a PAC file. WPAD uses the following methods in order to discover the PAC file URL: DHCP DNS WINS LLMNR NetBIOS Hosts Lmhosts The PAC file tells the host where to direct network traffic. This is usually used to force traffic through a web proxy. Why is it insecure? When DHCP or DNS is misconfigured or not configured, an attacker can provide the client with a PAC file that directs traffic to a compromised server. ...