I am using Firefox 22 and Selenium IDE 2.2.0.
I have loaded a page in firefox using the HTTP protocol (not HTTPS). I know for sure that the page has set a secure cookie (as a result of an embedded AJAX request). I can verify this using the browser internal url chrome://web-developer/content/generated/view-cookie-information.html - because among other cookies that page shows a cookie like this:
Name WC_AUTHENTICATION_5122759
Value 5122759%2cDKppXa7BAqnZ0ERDLb0Wee%2bXqUk%3d
Host .testserver.dk
Path /
Expires At end of session
Secure Yes
HttpOnly No
However, when I run assertCookie in the Selenium IDE I can only see the unsecure cookies. I.e. all cookies - except then one above - are detected by Selenium IDE:
Executing: |assertCookie | glob:WC_AUTHENTICATION_* | | yields this set of visible cookies:
[error] Actual value 'JSESSIONID=0000uCQdh2FZ0ZA8z-O5zcGoUtD:-1;
WC_PERSISTENT=lT8Z5tbkQrvLhNm%2bGyCj%2bh4yPAU%3d%0d%0a%3b2013%2d07%2d05+13%3a18%3a18%2e807%5f1373023098807%2d3048%5f10201%5f5122827%2c%2d100%2cDKK%5f10201;
WC_SESSION_ESTABLISHED=true;
WC_ACTIVEPOINTER=%2d100%2c10201; WC_USERACTIVITY_5122827=5122827%2c10201%2cnull%2cnull%2cnull%2cnull%2cnull%2cnull%2cnull%2cnull%2cy6bjcrZgvCVe5c52BBKvcItxyF5lLravpDq9rd9I0ZmRfRNxcC2oG13Eyug3kKgbtLOHVLxm9T76%0d%0a%2fGJFLp5bOrkPoNqmc38TIr%2fO7eU%2fbd7Mfny2kQg7v6xGweYoRkXYgAEz91rH0QavFhlOjpd12A%3d%3d;'
did not match 'glob:WC_AUTHENTICATION_*'
So does anyone know how can I use the Selenium IDE to verify the presence of secure cookies on a page loaded with http:// (not https://) ?
Sadly, what you are doing is breaking the specifications. A secure cookie is suppose to be only available if the connection is secure. Hence, if you are connecting with HTTP, you can't see it.
However, if this is just on your test machine (not your end user), you can modify the response from the server using Fiddler. With Fiddler, you can program something like, if you see this cookie, add another cookie, or strip the secure flag.
EDIT:
Some background information about Selenium and cookies:
Selenium works through the browser with JavaScript as part of the page. Because it is essentially a part of the page, it has to follow all the same rules as the page. This means that it still has to abide by the security rules on cookies. A secure only cookie can only be read on a secure connection, thus Selenium cannot read a secure cookie if it's not on a secure connection.
The place where HTTP request comes in is that cookies are a part of the HTTP header. Both the request (from the browser) and the response (from the server) have an HTTP header. Cookies are present in both.
You want to verify if the server has set the cookie, so you want to inspect the HTTP response from the server for the presence of the cookie. Because of security restrictions, however, you cannot from Selenium. These security restrictions are enforced by the browser. All reputable browsers enforce these policies, since without these policies, the end user's credentials will be easily compromised.
This is where Fiddler comes in. Fiddler inspects the HTTP data at a lower level, before the browser gets to it. Thus, you can use Fiddler to manipulate the data before it gets to the browser to give some kind of indication that the cookie was present.
Related
Today I faced the term "cookiejar" (package net/http/cookiejar). I tried to gather some information regarding it, but got nothing intelligible came out. I know that cookie is key/value pairs that server sends to a client, eg: Set-Cookie: foo=10, browser stores it locally and then each subsequent request browser will send these cookies back to the server, eg: Cookie: foo=10.
Ok, but what about cookiejar? What is it and how does it look like?
As you described in your question, cookies are managed by browsers (HTTP clients) and they allow to store information on the clients' computers which are sent automatically by the browser on subsequent requests.
If your application acts as a client (you connect to remote HTTP servers using the net/http package), then there is no browser which would handle / manage the cookies. By this I mean storing/remembering cookies that arrive as Set-Cookie: response headers, and attaching them to subsequent outgoing requests being made to the same host/domain. Also cookies have expiration date which you would also have to check before deciding to include them in outgoing requests.
The http.Client type however allows you to set a value of type http.CookieJar, and if you do so, you will have automatic cookie management which otherwise would not exist or you would have to do it yourself. This enables you to do multiple requests with the net/http package that the server will see as part of the same session just as if they were made by a real browser, as often HTTP sessions (the session ids) are maintained using cookies.
The package net/http/cookiejar is a CookieJar implementation which you can use out of the box. Note that this implementation is in-memory only which means if you restart your application, the cookies will be lost.
So basically an HTTP cookie is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser while the user is browsing that website.
Cookiejar is a Go interface of a simple cookie manager (to manage cookies from HTTP request and response headers) and an implementation of that interface.
In general it is a datastore where an application (browser or not) puts the cookies it uses during requests and responses. So it is really a jar for cookies.
I am trying (for days) to make this work: I want to connect to a Media Servers using RTMPT netConnection. In order to reach that, I have to pass an authentication cookie along with my request. In Chrome and IE it works, but in Firefox it doesen't pass the auth_cookie.
When I look into logs I see the /open/1 request, but it has no cookie atached. Againg: in Chrome and IE it uses the cookie. The cookie doesn't have the HttpOnly flag.
Another weird scenario that I encountered is: Because it dosen't pass the cookie, the ApplicationServer wich holds the autentication, asks me for credentials. If I enter them it takes the cookie and works, and any subsequent connections work (firefox passes the auth_cookie along the /open/1 request); but if I delete all the cookies in browser (via CookieController-> Remove ALL cookies and DOM storage) the credentials are requested again (no cookie is passed).
Any sugestions? I've searched all the internet for a solution but I can't find anything...
I have a website that uses asynchronous http requests (ajax, to use the common misnomer) for performing login and registration. The authentication cookie is set by the asynchronous request and it all works great.
I recently locked down the registration and login actions to require https. Everything appears to work, except that the authentication cookie returned isn't functioning properly and the user doesn't actually get logged in.
In Chrome, in the development tools, under resources, it doesn't show any cookies having been created. If I go to the Chrome settings and view all the cookies, I can see that a cookie has been created. Perhaps it's encrypted and not readable?
So, to summarize:
The initial page is loaded using normal HTTP
The Login action is an asynchronous HTTPS request
The authentication cookie returned by the HTTPS request doesn't seem to be working
How do I get this to work?
A couple things I should note:
This is not a CORS issue.
I am aware of the potential man-in-the-middle attack. This website does not house sensitive data. I'm attempting to do something very similar (if not exactly the same) to what reddit is doing.
I managed to figure this out. Turns out that in the Http response, you need to set the Access-Control-Allow-Credentials header to true. Also, you must set the withCredentials to true on the client-side http request.
Is it correct to switch from HTTPS to HTTP (say by clicking a click which has full path in the href - with HTTP). Appreciate if someone let know what are the implications in such cases.
Thanks.
This actually can be a security risk, it depends on your situation.
If you create a session in that HTTPS part, and then visit a HTTP page of the same domain, the session cookie will be sent along with the unsecure HTTP request (plaintext). This makes your site vulnerable to session hijacking, an attacker can use this session id and has the same privileges as the logged in user has.
In PHP you can prevent this behaviour, calling the session_set_cookie_params() function, setting the $secure parameter to true. This tells the browser, to send the cookie to HTTPS pages only.
The browser will load a page from a non SSL source. No real implications as far as security is concerned.
Switching from HTTPS to HTTP is entirely correct if that is what the link is intended to do.
Implications include losing the encrypted communication link between client and server that HTTPS provides.
ssl encryption for the http (s) is used to protect transmitted information. For example, use https on the lognin page. After logging on, you can redirect to http.
So switching https and http is quite all right.
I'm trying to determine the most secure method for an ajax based login form to authenticate and set a client side cookie. I've seen things about XSS attacks such as this:
How do HttpOnly cookies work with AJAX requests?
and
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001167.html
So, I guess my core questions are...
1) Is using pure ajax to set cookies secure, if so, what is the most secure method (httpOnly + SSL + encrypted values, etc.)?
2) Does a pure ajax method involve setting the cookie client side? Is this at all secure?
3) Is setting cookies this way reliable across all major browsers/OSs?
4) Would using a hidden IFrame be any more secure (calling a web page to set the cookies)?
5) If possible, does anybody have code for this (PHP is my backend)?
My goal is to set the cookies and have them available for the next call to the server without navigating away from the page.
I really want to nail down the consensus, most secure way to do this. Eventually, this code is planned to be made Open Source, so please no commercial code (or nothing that wouldn't stand up to public scrutiny)
Thanks,
-Todd
The cookie needs to be generated server-side because the session binds the client to the server, and therefore the token exchange must go from server to client at some stage. It would not really be useful to generate the cookie client-side, because the client is the untrusted remote machine.
It is possible to have the cookie set during an AJAX call. To the server (and the network) an AJAX call is simply an HTTP call, and any HTTP response by the server can set a cookie. So yes, it is possible to initiate a session in response to an AJAX call, and the cookie will be stored by the client as normal.
So, you can use AJAX to do the logging in process in the same was as you could have just relied on a POST from a form on the page. The server will see them the same way, and if the server sets a cookie the browser will store it.
Basically, client-side Javascript never needs to be able to know the value of the cookie (and it is better for security if it doesn't, which can be achieved using the "httponly" cookie extension honored by recent browsers). Note that further HTTP calls from the client to the server, whether they are normal page requests or they are AJAX requests, will include that cookie automatically, even if it's marked httponly and the browser honors that extension. Your script does not need to be 'aware' of the cookie.
You mentioned using HTTPS (HTTP over SSL) - that prevents others from being able to read information in transit or impersonate the server, so it's very handy for preventing plain text transmission of the password or other important information. It can also help guard against network based attacks, though it does not make you immune to everything that CSRF can throw you, and it does not at all protect you against the likes of session fixation or XSS. So I would avoid thinking of HTTPS as a fix-all if you use it: you still need to be vigilant about cross-site scripting and cross-site request forgery.
(see 1. I sort of combined them)
Given that the cookie is set by the server in its HTTP response headers, yes it is reliable. However, to make it cross-browser compatible you still need to ensure logging in is possible when AJAX is unavailable. This may require implementing an alternative that is seen only when there is no Javascript or if AJAX isn't available. (Note: now in 2014, you don't need to worry about browser support for AJAX anymore).
It would not change the security. There would be no need for it, except that I have seen hidden iframes used before to 'simulate' AJAX before - ie make asyncronous calls to the server. Basically, however you do it doesn't matter, it's the server setting the cookie, and the client will accept and return the cookie whether it does it by AJAX or not.
For the most part, whether you use AJAX or not does not affect the security all that much as all the real security happens on the server side, and to the server an AJAX call is just like a non-AJAX call: not to be trusted. Therefore you'll need to be aware of issues such as session fixation and login CSRF as well as issues affecting the session as a whole like CSRF and XSS just as much as you would if you were using no AJAX. The issues don't really change when using AJAX except, except, I guess, that you may make more mistakes with a technology if you're less familiar with it or it's more complicated.
Answer updated September 2014