DrHeaderPlus

There are a number of HTTP headers which enhance the security of a website when used. Often ignored, or unknown, these HTTP security headers help prevent common web application vulnerabilities when used.

DrHeaderPlus helps with the audit of security headers received in response to a single request or a list of requests.

DrHeaderPlus ships a built-in OWASP ASVS 4.0 V14 preset (--preset owasp-asvs-v14) for compliance scanning, and is a useful tool to include as part of an automated CI/CD pipeline which checks for missing HTTP headers.

DrHeaderPlus is a modernized fork of the original drHEADer project by Santander UK Security Engineering.

Features

• Comprehensive header audit against a configurable YAML ruleset aligned with OWASP and Mozilla Observatory
• CSP intelligence — nonce/hash-aware validation that avoids false positives for modern CSP policies; strict-dynamic support
• CORS misconfiguration detection — active origin reflection probe in scan mode
• Cookie security — SameSite=None without Secure flag detection, attribute enforcement
• Leak header detection — flags Server, X-Powered-By, X-AspNet-Version, and other information disclosure headers
• Cross-origin isolation — opt-in COEP/COOP validation for sites that need SharedArrayBuffer / high-resolution timers
• OWASP ASVS 4.0 V14 preset — built-in --preset owasp-asvs-v14 for compliance scanning against ASVS configuration requirements
• Threshold checks — Value-Gte validation for numeric directives (e.g. HSTS max-age >= 6 months)
• Per-rule severity — high / medium / low aligned with OWASP guidance
• CLI and library — use from the command line or integrate into your Python project
• Multiple output formats — table, JSON, and JUnit XML for CI/CD integration

Installation

Requires Python 3.11+. Install from PyPI:

pip install drheaderplus

How Do I Use It?

There are two ways you could use DrHeaderPlus, depending on what you want to achieve. The easiest way is using the CLI.

CLI

For details on using the CLI, see CLI.md

In a Project

It is also possible to call DrHeaderPlus from within an existing project, and this is achieved like so:

from drheader import Drheader

scanner = Drheader(headers={'X-XSS-Protection': '1; mode=block'})

report = scanner.analyze()

Customize HTTP request

By default, the tool uses HEAD method when making a request, but you can change that by supplying the method argument like this:

from drheader import Drheader

scanner = Drheader(url='https://example.com', method='POST')

Other requests arguments

You can use any other arguments that are supported by requests to customise the HTTP request:

from drheader import Drheader

scanner = Drheader(url='https://example.com', headers={'X-API-Key': '726204fe-8a3a-4478-ae8f-4fb216a8c4ba'})

from drheader import Drheader

scanner = Drheader(url='https://example.com', verify=False)

Cross-Origin Isolation

The default rules in DrHeaderPlus support cross-origin isolation via the Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy and Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy headers. Due to the potential for this to break websites that have not yet properly configured their sub-resources for cross-origin isolation, these validations are opt-in at analysis time. If you want to enforce these cross-origin isolation validations, you must pass the cross_origin_isolated flag.

In a project:

from drheader import Drheader

scanner = Drheader(url='https://example.com')
scanner.analyze(cross_origin_isolated=True)

How Do I Customise DrHeaderPlus Rules?

DrHeaderPlus relies on a yaml file that defines the policy it will use when auditing security headers. The file is located at ./drheader/resources/rules.yml, and you can customise it to fit your particular needs. Please follow this link if you want to know more.

Notes

• On ubuntu systems you may need to install libyaml-dev to avoid errors related to a missing yaml.h.

Who Is Behind It?

DrHeaderPlus is maintained by @garootman.

The original drHEADer was developed by the Santander UK Security Engineering team:

• David Albone
• Javier Dominguez Ruiz
• Fernando Cabrerizo
• James Morris