HTTP Load Balancer: HSTS response header is missing includeSubdomains

Best practices are to include the includeSubdomains directive in HSTS header. When HSTS is enabled on an HTTP load balancers, includeSubDomains is missing from Strict-Transport-Security response header.

Reference links:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6797
https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security_Cheat_Sheet.html

  • Joseph Cunningham
  • Jun 24 2025
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  • Guest commented
    21 Jul 18:13

    I agree that an option should be available to add includeSubDomains to HSTS. But it must not be mandatory, and should not be the default for existing sites. There are subdomains that do not support HTTPS which would be broken if includeSubDomains were added to our current LBs.