I was researching the purpose of CORS headers, and the accepted answer here: What is the issue CORS is trying to solve? says, that the reason for its existence is, to prevent cookies unintentionally being sent to external sites when making HTTP requests from JS (fetch or XMLHttpRequest).
Reading up on how cookies are handled based on the Set-Cookie documentation page, doesn't the SameSite=Strict cookie option obsolete CORS completely? It says:
means that the browser sends the cookie only for same-site requests,
that is, requests originating from the same site that set the cookie.
If a request originates from a different domain or scheme (even with
the same domain), no cookies with the SameSite=Strict attribute are
sent.
In summary both CORS headers and the SameSite=Strict option for the Set-Cookie header seem to solve the same problem. Why does both exist?
As the title suggests, I don’t think this is possible in Django:latest as of the time if writing, but is it possible to detect if a cookie sent up in the request.HEADERS is httpOnly?
For instances, you can use OWASP ZAP or Detectify to check if the cookies are being set without the HttpOnly flag.
Don't you also forget that in Django, there's settings you can take advantage of by setting to True in your settings.py, for instances
LANGUAGE_COOKIE_HTTPONLY
SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY
CSRF_COOKIE_HTTPONLY
No. HttpOnly is a directive of the Set-Cookie response header. There is nothing in the Cookie request header that indicates that. This is a fact about HTTP and not a limitation of Django.
First of all, I assume a backend that control inputs to prevent XSS vulnerabilities.
In this answer #Les Hazlewood explain how to protect the JWT in the client side.
Assuming 100% TLS for all communication - both during and at all times
after login - authenticating with username/password via basic
authentication and receiving a JWT in exchange is a valid use case.
This is almost exactly how one of OAuth 2's flows ('password grant')
works.
[...]
You just set the Authorization header:
Authorization: Bearer <JWT value here>
But, that being said, if your REST client is 'untrusted' (e.g.
JavaScript-enabled browser), I wouldn't even do that: any value in the
HTTP response that is accessible via JavaScript - basically any header
value or response body value - could be sniffed and intercepted via
MITM XSS attacks.
It's better to store the JWT value in a secure-only, http-only cookie
(cookie config: setSecure(true), setHttpOnly(true)). This guarantees
that the browser will:
only ever transmit the cookie over a TLS connection and,
never make the cookie value available to JavaScript code.
This approach is almost everything you need to do for best-practices
security. The last thing is to ensure that you have CSRF protection on
every HTTP request to ensure that external domains initiating requests
to your site cannot function.
The easiest way to do this is to set a secure only (but NOT http only)
cookie with a random value, e.g. a UUID.
I don't understand why we need the cookie with the random value to ensure that external domains initiating requests to your site cannot function. This doesn't come free with Same-origin policy?
From OWASP:
Checking The Origin Header
The Origin HTTP Header standard was introduced as a method of
defending against CSRF and other Cross-Domain attacks. Unlike the
referer, the origin will be present in HTTP request that originates
from an HTTPS url.
If the origin header is present, then it should be checked for
consistency.
I know that the general recommendation from OWASP itself is Synchronizer Token Pattern but I can't see what are the vulnerabilities that remains in:
TLS + JWT in secure httpOnly cookie + Same-origin policy + No XSS vulnerabilities.
UPDATE 1:
The same-origin policy only applies to XMLHTTPRequest, so a evil site can make a form POST request easily an this will break my security. An explicit origin header check is needed. The equation would be:
TLS + JWT in secure httpOnly cookie + Origin Header check + No XSS vulnerabilities.
Summary
I had a misunderstood concepts about Same-origin policy and CORS that #Bergi, #Neil McGuigan and #SilverlightFox helped me to clarify.
First of all, what #Bergi says about
SOP does not prevent sending requests. It does prevent a page from
accessing results of cross-domain requests.
is an important concept. I thought that a browser doesn't make the request to the cross domain accordingly to the SOP restriction but this is only true for what Monsur Hossain calls a "not-so-simple requests" in this excellent tutorial.
Cross-origin requests come in two flavors:
simple requests
"not-so-simple requests" (a term I just made up)
Simple requests are requests that meet the following criteria:
HTTP Method matches (case-sensitive) one of:
HEAD
GET
POST
HTTP Headers matches (case-insensitive):
Accept
Accept-Language
Content-Language
Last-Event-ID
Content-Type, but only if the value is one of:
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
multipart/form-data
text/plain
So, a POST with Content Type application/x-www-form-urlencoded will hit to the server (this means a CSRF vulnerability) but the browser will not make accessible the results from that request.
A POST with Content Type application/json is a "not-so-simple request" so the browser will make a prefligth request like this
OPTIONS /endpoint HTTP/1.1
Host: https://server.com
Connection: keep-alive
Access-Control-Request-Method: POST
Origin: https://evilsite.com
Access-Control-Request-Headers: content-type
Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, sdch
Accept-Language: es-ES,es;q=0.8
If the server respond with for example:
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://trustedsite.com
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, PUT
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: content-type
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
the browser will not make the request at all, because
XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://server.com/endpoint. Response to
preflight request doesn't pass access control check: The
'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header contains the invalid value
'trustedsite.com'. Origin 'evilsite.com' is therefore not allowed access.
So I think that Neil was talking about this when he pointed out that:
the Same-origin Policy only applies to reading data and not
writing it.
However, with the origin header explicit control that I proposed to Bergi I think is enough with respect to this issue.
With respect to my answer to Neil I didn't mean that that answer was the one to all my question but it remembered me another important issue about SOP and it was that the policy only applies to XMLHTTPRequest's.
In conclusion, I think that the equation
TLS + JWT in secure httpOnly cookie + Origin Header check + No XSS vulnerabilities.
is a good alternative if the API is in another domain like SilverlightFox says. If the client is in the same domain that the client I will have troubles with requests that doesn't include the Origin header. Again from the cors tutorial:
The presence of the Origin header does not necessarily mean that the
request is a cross-origin request. While all cross-origin requests
will contain an Origin header, some same-origin requests might have
one as well. For example, Firefox doesn't include an Origin header on
same-origin requests. But Chrome and Safari include an Origin header
on same-origin POST/PUT/DELETE requests (same-origin GET requests will
not have an Origin header).
Silverlight pointed this out to.
The only risk that remains is that a client can spoof the origin header to match the allowed origin, so the answer i was looking for was actually this
UPDATE: for those who watch this post, I have doubts about if the origin header is needed at all using JWT.
The equation would be:
TLS + JWT stored in secure cookie + JWT in request header + No XSS vulnerabilities.
Also, the previous equation has httpOnly cookie but this won't work if you got the client and the server in different domains (like many SPA application today) because the cookie wouldn't be sent with each request to the server. So you need access the JWT token stored in the cookie and send it in a header.
Why Same-origin policy isn't enough to prevent CSRF attacks?
Because the Same-origin Policy only applies to reading data and not writing it.
You want to avoid http://compromised.com from making a request like this (from the user's browser):
POST https://example.com/transfer-funds
fromAccountId:1
toAccountId:666
A legit request would look like this:
POST https://example.com/transfer-funds
fromAccountId: 1
toAccountId: 666
csrfToken: 249f3c20-649b-44de-9866-4ed72170d985
You do this by demanding a value (the CSRF token) that cannot be read by an external site, ie in an HTML form value or response header.
Regarding the Origin header, older browsers don't support it, and Flash had some vulnerabilities that let the client change it. Basically you'd be trusting Adobe not to screw anything up in the future...does that sound like a good idea?
ensure that you have CSRF protection on every HTTP request
You only need CSRF protection on requests with side-effects, such as changing state or sending a message
I just want to summarize the answers.
As other mentioned SOP applies only to XmlHttpRequests. This means by specification browsers must send ORIGIN header along with requests that were made by means of XmlHttpRequests.
If you check Chromium sends origin when you submit form as well. However this doesn't mean other browsers do. The image below illustrates two post requests made in Firefox. One is made by submitting a form and a second one using XHR. Both requests were made from http://hack:3002/changePassword to http://bank:3001/chanePassword.
Browser is allowed to not send the origin header if request was made from the same domain. So server should check the origin policy only when origin header is set.
The conclusion is: if you use cookies and a request comes to server without origin header, you can't differentiate whether it was made by submitting a form from another domain or by XHR within the same domain. That's why you need additional check with CSRF.
TLDR:
As long as the request is sent(with cookie), there is a possibility of an csrf attack.
SOP(Same-origin-Policy) only don't allow cross-origin reads(except for embedded element such as <script> <img> etc), but allow cross-origin writes.
More specifically, browser use CORS mechanism to get Cross-Origin resource, there is two situations:
Simple requests
Browser will add the Origin field, then send to the server.(csrf happen)
Others (Other than Simple requests)
CORS preflight was triggered, the request may not be sent to the server.(csrf may happen)
Reference
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Same-origin_policy
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CORS
This question really applies to any non-200 and non-redirects.
For a standard HTML site, the body of a 401 response is generally HTML, letting the client know in a pretty way that they need to login. In the case of Java, at least, you can provide a message when you throw a 401, and that msg is displayed in the client.
What (if any) is the standard way of sending that message down to the client in the case of a web service? Is the contents of the body application specific? Is there a standard header where that information could live, in which case the body would be empty?
Thanks,
Roy
All information needed to authenticate should be in the WWW-Authenticate response header field.
I am writting a client program. When I login, the server will send some cookies to me in the 'Set-Cookie' header field.
I need to get the cookies, because the rest of the request will need them.
I try to get the cookies with xmlhttprequest.getResponseHeader("Set-Cookie"), but failed.
I don't want to use C++, so could it be possible?
No, it is not possible without using C++.
Look at source code for QDeclarativeXMLHttpRequest::fillHeadersList() method. It particularly removes set-cookie and set-cookie2 headers, following w3c specs for XMLHttpRequest object. Specifically behaviour of getAllResponseHeaders method. That is:
Return all the HTTP headers, excluding headers that are a case-insensitive match for Set-Cookie or Set-Cookie2, ...