How to disable HTTP Strict Transport Security?

Question

I had a Rails application with config.force_ssl = true, but now I dont want SSL encryption, but my app is still redirecting to https. I read this is a HTTP Stri

Answer 1

Just wanted to point out @Bruno's answer and @JoeVanDyk's suggestions are true and can be applied beyond the context of Rails/Apache. I'm using PHP and Nginx. PHP has nothing to do with it in my case, but here's the steps with Nginx:

//sorry here's the nginx.conf part first, can't figure out how to mix multi-line 
//code with an ordered list

server {
   #...
   #change:
   # add_header  Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=315360000; includeSubdomains";     
   #to:
   add_header  Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=0;";
   #...
}

1. clear your "browser history". To clarify on @JoeVanDyk's suggestion , I think you need to clear "browsing history" because clearing the cache didn't work for me (tested on Chrome/Firefox, please add comments if you know more).

2. nginx.conf file (see code above)

3. restart server

   root@ip-xxx-xxx-xxx:~# /etc/init.d/nginx restart.

After this, you can revert the nginx add_header Strict.. command to what you previously had. Just make sure you repeat steps 1-3 again.