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§Configuring Security Headers

Play provides a security headers filter that can be used to configure some default headers in the HTTP response to mitigate security issues and provide an extra level of defense for new applications.

§Enabling the security headers filter

To enable the security headers filter, add the Play filters project to your libraryDependencies in build.sbt:

libraryDependencies += filters

Now add the security headers filter to your filters, which is typically done by creating a Filters class in the root of your project:

Scala

import javax.inject.Inject

import play.api.http.HttpFilters
import play.filters.headers.SecurityHeadersFilter

class Filters @Inject() (securityHeadersFilter: SecurityHeadersFilter) extends HttpFilters {
  def filters = Seq(securityHeadersFilter)
}

Java

import play.api.mvc.EssentialFilter;
import play.filters.headers.SecurityHeadersFilter;
import play.http.HttpFilters;

import javax.inject.Inject;

public class Filters implements HttpFilters {

    @Inject
    SecurityHeadersFilter securityHeadersFilter;

    public EssentialFilter[] filters() {
        return new EssentialFilter[] { securityHeadersFilter };
    }
}

The Filters class can either be in the root package, or if it has another name or is in another package, needs to be configured using play.http.filters in application.conf:

play.http.filters = "filters.MyFilters"

§Configuring the security headers

Scaladoc is available in the play.filters.headers package.

The filter will set headers in the HTTP response automatically. The settings can can be configured through the following settings in application.conf

play.filters.headers.frameOptions - sets X-Frame-Options, “DENY” by default.
play.filters.headers.xssProtection - sets X-XSS-Protection, “1; mode=block” by default.
play.filters.headers.contentTypeOptions - sets X-Content-Type-Options, “nosniff” by default.
play.filters.headers.permittedCrossDomainPolicies - sets X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies, “master-only” by default.
play.filters.headers.contentSecurityPolicy - sets Content-Security-Policy, “default-src ‘self’” by default.

Any of the headers can be disabled by setting a configuration value of null, for example:

play.filters.headers.frameOptions = null

For a full listing of configuration options, see the Play filters reference.conf.

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