I'm developing my web app with Spring MVC 2.5.6 and I need some help for multiple user sessions in it. The header of my app shows the logged user.
In my computer, I open two browsers (no tabs):
In the first one, I log in my app with user1 and get into. In the header, user1 appears.
In the second, I log in with user2 and go on. In the header, user2 appears.
Then, I switch to the first browser, submit an operation to the controller and when the app is showed again, in the header user2 appears, and it's wrong because I logged in with user1.
So, my questions are:
SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication().getName() may not be the right way to get the logged user with many users, because it's singleton (isn't it?). How could I do this?
This wrong situation is also happening with session object, so user1 data stored in the session object (managed with request.getSession().setAttribute(...) and request.getSession.getAttribute(...)) is override with user2 data.
In this StackOverflow question, Handling Session ID with Spring, it's suggested that session ID would be managed to separate data. Should I manage manually each user data with session ID internally in my application? How could I get the session ID?
In general terms, my problem is with dealing with multiple users/sessions.
Any help would be very appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Best regards
In my computer, I open two browsers (no tabs):
In the first one, I log in my app with user1 and get into. In the header, user1 appears.
In the second, I log in with user2 and go on. In the header, user2 appears.
Then, I switch to the first browser, submit an operation to the controller and when the app is showed again, in the header user2 appears, and it's wrong because I logged in with user1.
With session as normally implemented, this is normal behavior if the client is running two windows or tabs of the same browser on the same machine, as they share the session.
If you open the app in IE and Firefox, they will not share a session, and things will work properly.
I don't believe there's a way to get the browser to stop sharing session among windows, so if you need them to act independently, you'll need to essentially create your own session mechanism, likely by using hidden fields or some such hack rather than the cookies or url-rewriting the normal mechanism uses.
It would be better to just accept the situation. Let the user know when they open the second window and connect to your app that they are already logged in, and don't allow another login.
Related
Let's suppose I'd opened two or more user sessions on two or more devices (same user with not admin privileges).
At the current session, if I log out, it means all others sessions will also close? If not, is there a way to do this by an URL request?
something like this:
User call a method, ex: [plone-site]/close-all-sessions-except-this;
Results on: all user sessions, opened on the others devices are closed.
Would be better if this method were native in plone.
gmail has this feature. I think it's an important security and privacy issue.
Not really sure what you are asking, but if you want to automatically logout all authenticated users (not only one user) you can:
Go to ZMI
Enter inside acl_users
Select the session plugin
In the "Invalidate all session identifiers" section click the "Clear secrets" button.
As you can read there:
By clicking the button below you clear all secrets used to validate
sessions. This will immediately log out all users who use session
authentication and require them to log in again.
That's a nice feature request, would you mind opening an issue? AFAIK Plone doesn't include that by default.
When you log out of one session Plone will close all sessions for that browser AND site URL, because the session is stored in a cookie set to site's domain. However Plone won't log you out from other browsers/devices, nor in the edge case you're accessing the site by IP, if that's available.
I've developed an app in laravel and sentry2 as ACL. Login occurs through SAML.
Whenever a user logs in from SAML is redirected to my app where I check server variables, and if credentials are correct I let him pass to the site with sentry.
My issue occurs when I try to log in with the same account in two different browsers. Looks like when I log in in the second browser the existing session in the other browser gets overrided.
I've found out this looking into sessions table:
http://pastebin.com/6iEnRkEs
Any ideas? Will appreciate your help on this very much.
Thanks a lot!
Pablo
EDIT:
The idea would be that the app work like gmail/fb that allows the user to be logged in both browsers at the same time.
It's correct the way it is.
Different browsers different sessions. This is a security feature/matter every single app should enforce.
If you log in a different browser how could Laravel tell if it's not a different person login in from a different computer in the same network? Log someone off in this case it's also the correct thing to do, because if some kind of exploit is happening, user will see something is wrong and, maybe, change his/her password.
Some (ie: banking) also do: different browser tabs, different sessions, but this is not the Laravel case.
I was wondering if it ever would make sense to have two concurrent sessions in the same browser? There could be two types of cases with this:
1) A user opens a browser window and logs in as user A, starting session 1. Then he opens another browser window (in the same browser) where he logs in as user A, but starts a different session, session 2.
I know that this is often not possible in many browsers, as one session cookie is set for the entire browser. However, in some browsers, it is possible to have multiple sessions in that manner.
2) This is similar to 1, except that the second time the user logs in, he logs in as user B, starting session 2. So now you have a person logged in as two users in the same browser.
Finally, allowing these things doesn't seem like the best security practice and neither does it seem to be practical. What do others think?
First thing First as the your Assumption is wrong. First of all you have to understand that when Single website is accessed from browser have single session and its not possible to simultaneously run different session of same web Browser.
It seems you have wrongly understand the working of Private Browser. Private Session are not made not to share information cookies and data with other public session and vise versa also. As soon as you close the Private Session all the Cache, Cookie and other things are deleted for forever.
I have not seen any web browser supporting the Multiple session of browser.
But an alternative approach is available i.e you have to create different Web Browser Profiles which can help you as each Profile data is maintained separately and have no conflict with other sessions.
One possible scenario currently I am facing requires allowing multiple user sessions from the same browser and I have not been able to find a proper solution for it yet.
We are using Yii framework. Currently we have two kinds of users i.e customers and admins. Both login from the same login form and use same session name and variables to store session information. Only based on type column in user table(customer or admin), the user is taken to appropriate views. In one of admin views(pages), there is an option for admin to log in as any of the users and propagate through the user's view in an iframe. The problem is that when the admin open two tabs and logs in as two different users, the session information of one overwrites the other and we start getting session related issues.
Can anyone suggest me a proper way to handle these kind of issues. I have searched a lot on trying to handle this with multiple sessions, but have not been able to find a proper solution yet.
There's nothing to "provide support for" here. One browser cannot hold more than one session, since it only holds one unique cookie per site, regardless of window. If a browser actually has a mode in which it supports holding two separate identical cookies per site, then it's the same as if the user logged on from another browser or another machine. That certainly should work; i.e. you should not try to subvert that behavior. A double session inside the same browser is then just a specific instance of this multi-session behavior, nothing special.
I am making a bookmarklet, which calls a Google App Engine app. The GAE app uses login information, which I want to store in bookmarklet, so when user first clicks bookmarklet,it asks for login info, but from next time onwards it automatically supplies it.
The difficulty of a bookmarklet directly storing data is that it can only store data in cookie or in localStore, both of which "belong" to whatever page it is currently on. That means it won't work again the next time you use it on a different page, and it also means the page you are on can access the data, which is generally very bad for security.
There are two basic ways your situation is generally handled. The two main ways are:
1.) The application used keeps the user logged in with a cookie. The login information is not stored in the cookie; only a session ID is. This is like when you return to many popular websites, you don't have to log in again. Very often these types of bookmarklets open a small popup for the user which contains a page from the app. If the user is not logged in, the app prompts the user to login first. The bookmarklet in fact knows nothing about being signed in or not.
2.) Each bookmarklet is custom created for each person. So my bookmarklet would be different than yours. The difference is simply that mine will contain my login info in the code, and yours will contain your login information in the code. In fact we would each have to login to the app first before we can get our own personalized bookmarklet.
Generally, option 1 is better and easier and more secure.
If I understand it correctly,this Might help you. http://ajaxian.com/archives/whats-in-a-windowname
It allows for storing data in windowname in JS. Allowing for access of up-to 2 MB of data (A lot more than cookies can hold) and I believe can be used across tabs...
I am writing my first FireFox extension and I have some questions. Maybe someone can help.
I have a website which requires login. The sign-in is one user per login type. So if I am logged with the username "tom" from one PC and go to other PC and try to login with the same details, it fails. When I click the log-out button from my authenticated page, the new location executes a PHP function to log-out the user (updates the "logged" status of the user in MySQL). The problem is that if a user is logged in from his work desk and surfing the page then suddenly he gets a call by a friend to quickly grab lunch in his break and has to meet him in short time, he just clicks the X (close) button from Firefox, forgetting to press the log-out button so the status of the logged is still 1. Later on, if he wants to access the page again from home, he won't be able to log in.
So, I need to grab the "close" event from firefox somehow. I am thinking about looking for the ones that contain the "website.com" domain only. Then, if a tab is closed or the main window of Firefox is closed, send an unique key, and the username to that URL that logs out the user and the problem may be solved. I don't know if this is possible. Please post any idea (followed by code if you can) for this extension to be built.
Thank you.
By design, this is wrong.
If a user's PC crashes (harddisk failure, power failure) your plugin won't be able to log out the user. And so, the user won't be able to login on any PC.
--
Let's revisit the premise,
a. why does logging in from another PC need to fail?
b. How about invalidating the login from the previous PC (log out) when the user logs in to another PC. THis is kind of like how chat applications like Yahoo! Messenger work.
From your answers, here's what i would suggest: if the user is logged in on another PC, warn and present the user with options:
cancel logging in
forcibly log out the other user and proceed to logging in
Logging the user out after a certain time of inactivity is the (application or web) server's responsibility, not (only) the client-browser's. This is called a session timeout.
You might be able to avoid the timeout by a browser implementation as you describe it, but this should not be the primary solution.
Here's an off hand approach you might take:
In your case I would include a timestamp in the table where the 'locked' state is stored. Every time a user does an action that timestamp is updated. When you try to login again ad the timestamp is older that a certain threshold (e.g. 15min) your login code should silently logout the previous user.
In order to receive a notice about the tab being closed, you'll want to do something like this sample code. However, instead of listening for load, you'll want to listen for unload.
When you do end up getting notified about unload, you'll have to do a request to the logout page just like the web application does. You can figure out what the location of the document that is unloading is by checking aEvent.originalTarget.location.href. Note that aEvent.originalTarget will give you the document object of the tab that is closing. You'll then want to use an XLMHttpRequest for this in your event handler.
You could use ajax that would ping a page on the site - all the session info will be passed and you can verify that the user still has an active browser/page open. If Firefox crashes it won't be able to ping the website anymore and the session could time-out after 15 minutes. I think that allowing a forced logout on another sign-in would be best. Usually when I leave work at the end of the day I wouldn't close all the programs or logout or anything - just lock my computer to prevent anyone from using it. Next morning I come back with all my programs still running so I can continue where I left off.
BTW, Yahoo Web messenger probably uses some form of session-based cookies. That is, cookies are stored in memory and are gone when the tab or browser are closed.
Just enable to the user to re-login from another machine. And if you get a request from the user on first machine, ask him to re-login too. So you get a single logged in user at a time.