Peterbe.com

tl;dr; When you use add_header in a location block in Nginx, it undoes all "parent" add_header directives. Dangerous!

Gist of the problem is this:

There could be several add_header directives. These directives are inherited from the previous level if and only if there are no add_header directives defined on the current level.

From the documentation on add_header

The grand but subtle mistake

Basically, I had this:

server {
    server_name example.com;

    ...gzip...
    ...ssl...
    ...root...

    # Great security headers...
    add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
    add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
    ...more security headers...

    location / {
        try_files    $uri /index.html;
    }
}

And when you curl it, you can see that it works:

$ curl -I https://example.com
[snip]
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=63072000; includeSubdomains; preload

The mistake I had, was that I added a new add_header inside a relevant location block. If you do that, all the other "global" add_headers are dropped.
E.g.

server {
    server_name example.com;

    ...gzip...
    ...ssl...
    ...root...

    # Great security headers...
    add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
    add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
    ...more security headers...

    location / {
        try_files    $uri /index.html;
        # NOTE! Adding some more headers here
+       add_header X-debug-whats-going-on on; 
    }
}

Now, same curl command:

$ curl -I https://example.com
[snip]
X-debug-whats-going-on: on

Yikes! Now those other useful security headers are gone!

Here are your options:

1. Don't add headers like that inside location blocks. Yeah, that's not always a choice.
2. Copy-n-paste all the general security add_header blocks into the location blocks where you have to have "custom" add_header entries.
3. Use an include file, see below.

How to include files

First create a new file, like /etc/nginx/snippets/general-security-headers.conf then put this into it:

# Great security headers...
add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
...more security headers...
# More realistically, see https://gist.github.com/plentz/6737338

Now, instead of saying these add_header lines in your /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/example.conf change that to:

server {
    server_name example.com;

    ...gzip...
    ...ssl...
    ...root...

    include /etc/nginx/snippets/general-security-headers.conf;

    location / {
        try_files    $uri /index.html;
        # Note! This gets included *again* because
        # this location block needs its own custom add_header
        # directives.
        include /etc/nginx/snippets/general-security-headers.conf;
        # NOTE! Adding some more headers here
        add_header X-debug-whats-going-on on; 
    }
}

(You need to use your imagination that a real Nginx config site probably has many different more complex location directives)

It's arguably a bit clunky but it works and it's the best of both worlds. The right security headers for all locations and ability to set custom add_header directives for specific locations.

Discussion

I'm most disappointed in myself for not noticing. Not for not noticing this in the Nginx documentation, but that I didn't check my security headers on more than one path. But I'm also quite disappointed in Nginx for this rather odd behaviour. To quote my security engineer at Mozilla, April King:

"add" doesn't usually mean "subtract everything else"

She agreed with me that the way it works is counter-intuitive and showed me this snippet which uses include files the same way.