Share cookies between sessions in IE7 - cookies

I'm trying to get IE7 to share its cookies between sessions. I found that if i set the expiration date, it will share the cookies. However, i can't use this method because i am trying to control login to my application (users may only login once). Is there another way to get IE7 to share?
Thanks

As far as I know cookies aren't bound to session, but to the browser i.e. different sessions can read the same cookie (on the same domain).
A better way to check if a user is allready logged in would be a flag in the database, since users who really want to log in more then once can use different browsers...

Related

Tracking first time login from browser

I'm trying to detect when someone logs in to my site from a new computer or new browser - like a bank would do. And if that happens, trigger 2FA, send an email, etc.
So my plan was to add a cookie with a Guid in it and then look for that cookie with that Guid whenever they log in. If the value wasn't there, then most of the time, it'd be a new device.
But I'm using Azure B2C and I believe it's overwriting my cookies (where I was storing my unique device id with an expiration of 1 year). So after I login, I can see my cookie in the browser. It's even there after I logout. But after I login again using B2C, that cookie is gone.
I can see that I can have multiple cookie middleware, but I don't know how to access one scheme over another when I go to update the cookie in my code.
Does anyone know of any guidance or best practices on this? Been driving me nuts.
TIA
{I've edited the question to be more clear.}

Is it possible to access a logged-in session using Headless Chrome if you have control of that logged-in session?

I need to book an appointment on a website. These appointments are released sporadically and booked up quickly. To even see available appointment times, you have to login & complete a reCaptcha. If I wanted to write a scraper using Headless Chrome to continually scrape the site and notify me when a new appointment comes up, following the login flow each time would require beating the reCaptcha, which is at least non-zero difficult.
A better approach (I thought) would be to log in once manually, grab my session cookies, and then load them into Headless Chrome before making a request directly to the appointment times page. The server would see my request, see my session cookies, and respond as if the manually-logged in session had been refreshed. This is pretty much as outlined in the answer to this StackOverflow question: how to manage log in session through headless chrome?
But this doesn't work, and I can't figure out why. I get redirected every time straight back to the login page. I've tried on Chrome & Firefox, and with several other login-requiring websites (Facebook, Reddit, etc.).
How can these servers possibly discern between the original client and the one using copied cookies, when the cookies are what the servers use to identify clients in the first place?
Exact steps to reproduce:
Login to site of your choice on Chrome, let's say Facebook.
Export your cookies to your clipboard from the site using the EditThisCookie Extension
Launch an incognito window (to reset your active cookies) and import those session cookies with the same handy extension.
Navigate to the target, past-the-login-form url.
Get redirected.
Get frustrated.

Cookie dependent applications

What will be the situation if the application is dependent on cookies and user turned off cookies in browser?
Will the application fail to run?
Do developers need to handle it differently when cookies are turned off?
Depends on what your Application should do,
there is always an O-Point e.g. your are online at Facebook
and you start a new window in private mode you will not logged in.
Because the Cookie holds the session (cookie holds serveral informations)
I hope I could help you with it a bit tell me if I missed the topic
The app wont fail to run, but developers have to handle the situation differently when cookies are turned off.
For example, Facebook displays publicities related to your cookie informations. If you were looking for X product on Amazon, it will then display pubs about it.
If cookies are disabled, it would display other pubs, it wouldn't crash.

Django set django session cookies programmatically

I am creating a saas, software as a service site with django.
Due to the project requirements the users are inside schemas/tenants, for that im using the fantastic django-tenant-schemas app, one user can have accounts inside different schemas (they share username and password) ... i want to let the user move throught the different schemas they are in more or less freely ... for that i have created a view where the user can select on what schema he wants to be on.
When i use an application wide cookie session that is when i have the cookie setting as ".domain.ext" (django documentation) that works fine but its NOT the behaviour we really want for our application.
What we really need is to be able to have different versions of the app on different browser tabs.
So we have to set the cookie configuration to "domain.ext", then everything breaks because the original view is on one tenant and the next view (where the just logged user really belongs) is inside other tenant then the old cookie is deleted.
So the question is how can i programmatically set the cookie correctly on the new view so the user that really belongs to that tenat is still authenticated.
Or is there any alternative approach we could use for that? Any examples?
EDIT TO CLARIFY as demanded:
Person A belongs to 2 schemas SH1 and SH2 on both of them he has the same username and password.
On every password change the password hash is replicated on all the schemas they belong to so they dont have to remember specific passwords or usernames.
When the person is logged on SH1 the url will be sh1.domain.com when he is logged on SH2 the url will be sh2.domain.com
So lets say the person is now logged on schema SH1, he decides to switch to schema SH2, to be able to do that i need the user to still been authenticated so that view has to be on the SH1 schema, but then its redirected to the new schema force authenticating the user but since the cookie is set as domain specific (default django behaviour) when the user lands on the next url sh1.domain.com/whatever the previous cookie is deleted and thus he has to log in again to be able to access.
If I'm understanding correctly, you want the ability to have the behavior of a cross-domain cookie, but without actually using a cross-domain cookie.
The immediate answer that comes to mind is "well, use a cross-domain cookie". This is pretty much the vanilla example of a situation where you'd want to use use a cross-domain cookie. Engineering a complex solution so that you can avoid using the simple solution never ends well :-) Unless there's some other constraint in play that you haven't revealed, I'd start by questioning whether you shouldn't just be doing this the easy way.
However, assuming there is a good reason (and, frankly, I'd be interested to know what that is), the problem you're going to face is that browser security is essentially trying to stop you doing exactly what you're proposing. You want to know, from domain SH2, whether something has happened to a cookie set on domain SH1. That's exactly the situation that cookie security policies are designed to prevent.
The only way you're going to be able to work around this is to have a third party that can share knowledge. When user A logs into SH1, you do password authentication as normal - but you also post a flag somewhere that says "User A is now on SH1". When A logs into SH2, you post the corresponding flag. If A goes back to SH1, you check against the central source of truth, discover that they're currently on SH2, and force a login.
You probably could do this by manipulating cookies and session keys, but I suspect an easier way would be to use an Authentication backend. What you'll be writing is an authentication backend that is very similar to Django's own backend - except that it will be making checks of cross-domain login status against the central source of truth.
How you implement that "source of truth" is up to you - an in memory cache, database table, or any other source of data will do. The key idea is that you're not trying to rewrite cookies so that the same cookie works on every site - you're keeping each site's cookies independent, but using Django's authentication infrastructure to keep the cookies synchronised as a user moves between domains.

Repeated cookie query or Storing in viewstate? Which is the better practice?

I have a internal website that users log into. This data is saved as a cookie. From there the users go on their merry way. Every so often the application(s) will query the authentication record to determine what permissions the user has.
My question is this: Is it more efficent to just query the cookie for the user data when it is needed or to save the user information in viewstate?
[Edit] As mentioned below, Session is also an option.
Viewstate is specific to the page they are viewing, so its gone once they go along thier merry way. Not a good way to persist data.
Your best bet is to use Forms Authentication, its built in to ASP.NET and you can also shove any user-specific information into the Forms Authentication Ticket's Value. You can get 4000 bytes in (after encrypting) there that should hold whatever you need. It will also take care of allowing and denying users access to pages on the site, and you can set it to expire whenever you need.
Storing in the session is a no-no because it scales VERY poorly (eats up resources on the server), and it can be annoying to users with multiple browser connections to the same server. It is sometimes unavoidable, but you should take great pains to avoid it if you can.
Personally, I prefer using a session to store things, although the other developers here seem to think that's a no-no.
There is one caveat: You may want to store the user's IP in the session and compare it to the user's current IP to help avoid session hijacking. Possibly someone else here has a better idea on how to prevent session hijacking.
You can use session data - that way you know that once you have stored it there, users can't fool around with it by changing the query string.
I would use the cookie method. Session is okay but gets disposed by asp.net on recompile, and you have to use a non session cookie if you want to persist it after session anyway. Also if you ever use a stateserver its essentially doing the same thing (stores session in the db). Session is like a quick and dirty fix, real men use cookies.