Re: How to use JSESSIONID on follow-on request without basic auth?

From:
Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:32:10 +0000
Message-ID:
<alpine.DEB.1.10.1001212223510.6698@urchin.earth.li>
On Tue, 19 Jan 2010, markspace wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

I'm surprised it works. Disappointed, even - that doesn't seem very
secure. I suspect it may be implementation-dependent - what's the
server that is being fed the session IDs?


If a client is behind a proxy, then normal HTTP requests could be seen
coming from different IP addresses. In other words, one request could
be routed through proxy A, then the next request could see proxy A under
higher load, and be routed through proxy B. Both proxy A and proxy B
should have different IP addresses.


In which case the server could repeat its demand for authentication when
the requests come via proxy B. It means an additional round-trip when that
happens, but that doesn't seem like a huge deal.

I'm not sure what kind of vulnerabilities this introduces. Hopefully
security depends on more state than just the jsession ID. One should
have a hash or unique ID set in the cookie, I think.


If an attacker can get the JSESSIONID, then it would be able to get those
too, no?

Of course, once i start using words like 'attacker', i'm talking about
security, and then, the answer is that the connection should be using
HTTPS. Plain HTTP with authentication is really only a deterrent to idle
troublemakers, not serious villains.

tom

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