The product provides or relies on use of HTTP communications when HTTPS is available.
Because HTTP communications are not encrypted, HTTP is subject to various attacks against confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity. However, unlike many other protocols, HTTPS is widely available as a more secure alternative, because it uses encryption.
Explicitly require HTTPS or another mechanism that ensures that communication is encrypted [REF-1464].
Avoid using "mixed content," i.e., serving a web page over HTTPS in which the page includes elements that use "http:" URLs [REF-1466] [REF-1467]. This is often done for images or other resources that do not seem to have privacy or security implications.
Perform "HTTPS forcing," that is, redirecting HTTP requests to HTTPS.
If the product supports multiple protocols, ensure that encrypted protocols (such as HTTPS) are required, and remove any unencrypted protocols (such as HTTP).
HTTP can be subjected to attacks against confidentiality (by reading cleartext packets); integrity (by modifying sessions); and authenticity (by compromising servers and/or clients using cache poisoning, phishing, or other attacks that enable attackers to spoof a legitimate entity in the communication channel).