Wondering how to disable HSTS in Apache? We can help you.

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Let’s take a look at how our Support Team help a customer deal with this query.

How to disable HSTS in Apache?

HTTP Strict Transport Security Policy (HSTS) protects your websites from malicious attacks such as man-in-the-middle attacks, clickjacking and protocol downgrades.

It allows servers to specify that browsers and other compliant clients must only request HTTPS/SSL URLs directly.

Today, let us see the steps followed by our Support Techs to disable it:

• Firstly, open configuration file

Open virtual host configuration file for your website at /etc/apache2/sites-available.

If you have not created a virtual host file, open the default virtual host configuration file in a text editor.

$ sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

• Disable HSTS in Apache

Here, look for the following line

Header always set Strict-Transport-Security ...

If you find it, then remove it or comment it by adding # at its beginning.

If you are unable to find this line, run the following command to find the files where the above header is present.

$ sudo grep -nr "Strict-Transport-Security" /etc/apache2/sites-available

The output will list all files in /etc/apache2/sites-available that contain the above header directive.

If you still cannot find it, then look into the server configuration file at any of the following locations, depending on your installation:

1. /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
2. /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
3. /etc/httpd/httpd.conf
4. /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Since HSTS is disabled by default in Apache, it cannot have enable unless someone explicitly did so using server configuration file or virtual configuration file.

So it is important to find the right file where HSTS is enable and disable it.

• Restart Apache Server

Finally, restart Apache server to apply changes.

$ sudo service apache2 restart

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Conclusion

Today, we saw steps followed by our Support Engineers to disable HSTS in Apache.