[bug-diffutils] bug#56468: bug#56468: www.gnu.org doesn't change http: to https:

[Paul Eggert]

On 7/9/22 12:03, Jerry Peek wrote:
> I just clicked on an old link to 
> http://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/manual/. Then the web browser 
> showed the address http://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/manual/ and 
> marked it "insecure". So I tried 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/manual/ (with an s) and the 
> browser showed that address.
>
> I'm writing to suggest that you might add a redirect from 
> http://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/manual/ to 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/manual/ so that no one will get 
> the "insecure" page. 


Thanks for reporting this <https://bugs.gnu.org/56468>. The problem 
seems to be that when contacted via the HTTP protocol, www.gnu.org 
responds like the following, even though this doesn't make sense:

$ curl --head http://www.gnu.org
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 09 Jul 2022 18:55:16 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.29
Content-Location: home.html
Vary: negotiate,accept-language,Accept-Encoding
TCN: choice
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains; preload
X-Frame-Options: sameorigin
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: (null)
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Expires: Sat, 09 Jul 2022 18:55:16 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Language: en

The problem with this response is that HTTP clients are supposed to 
ignore the Strict-Transport-Security: header. That header makes sense 
only in an HTTPS response. www.gnu.org should respond like this:

$ curl --head http://www.github.com
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Content-Length: 0
Location: https://www.github.com/

I'm forwarding this to webmasters@gnu.org, who are people who can fix 
this, and am closing this diffutils bug report <https://bugs.gnu.org/56468>.