Re: Linking a cookie to an IP address is a very bad in 2015...

Indeed, people never learn...

OTOH, linking a session cookie to the user-agent IP address renders
'session cookie stealing' much more difficult

-éric

On 1/04/15 13:46, "Willy Tarreau" <w@1wt.eu> wrote:

>On Wed, Apr 01, 2015 at 11:32:05AM +0000, Eric Vyncke (evyncke) wrote:
>> In the era of scarce IPv4 addresses, servers should NOT link the HTTP
>>session
>> cookies to the user-agent IP address...
>> 
>> I have posted in the IETF V6OPS WG the following:
>> http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/92/slides/slides-92-v6ops-6.pdf

>> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-vyncke-v6ops-happy-eyeballs-cookie

>> 
>> In short, heavy use of NAT and/or dual-stack (IPv4/IPv6) can cause a
>>change
>> of user-agent address => lost of session.
>> 
>> Any suggestion on how this can be addressed? I know at least two major
>>web
>> sites in Belgium that removed IPv6 from their web site due to this
>>issue (and
>> their security department not wanting to unlink IP address from the
>>session
>> cookies)
>
>I'm amazed people still do that in 2015, I had the idea to do it in 1999
>until I realized it was stupid and never did it! So I'd have guessed that
>16 years later everyone would have also figured this! If IP addresses
>were stable during a session, cookies would not be needed, the address
>would be used instead. So it's precisely because addresses are unreliable
>that cookies exist.
>
>Too bad people don't learn from others' mistakes...
>
>Willy
>

Received on Wednesday, 1 April 2015 12:09:22 UTC