I'm inline... 

On 2010-11-30, at 10:35 AM, Phil Ames wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Rene <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I am stumped with how to access the supplied netID that was used to secure 
>> an application with CAS. I can
>> access this information inside a protected servlet with : 
>> request.getRemoteUser() in java. I have read that the NetID is put in the 
>> session. if you are using mod_cas. Aparently, the user id is stored in the 
>> REMOTE_USER in this case. My problem is that I am using Tomcat. My 
>> application is one html page with a lot of jQuery interaction. I am also 
>> using GWT in another protected application.
>> 
>> Once the user logs in, I would like to set a variable "somewhere" and be 
>> able to refer to it in my jQuery code. Sorry this is probably very simple 
>> but I cannot find an explanation that I can work from.
>> 
>> I think I'm missing a key piece given that I have limited experience in Web 
>> Development. I can see from FireFox that my secured application SITE has 
>> three cookies :
>> 
>> path : /TmpAlerts -> JSESSIONID
>> path : /cas -> CASTGC
>> path : /cas -> JSESSIONID
>> 
>> Can anyone provide a pointer to what I am missing ?
>> 
>> I did manage to get something going which may or may not be a security 
>> concern. This is what I have to check here... Is this an acceptable 
>> approach..?
>> 
>> I have created a servlet filter, which calls the request.getRemoteUser() 
>> method and sets a USER_ID cookie. My secured applications can then look at 
>> the cookie and get the user_id of the person who logged in.
> 
> Without additional details, this sounds like it could have disastrous
> security consequences.  A malicious user can completely control the
> value of the cookie and substitute another user id within it.  Please
> make sure that you are validating the provided user id against some
> session store, or signing the value and validating it (including an
> expiration time at which the identity needs to be re-affirmed to
> prevent permanent re-use of that cookie) before using it to make any
> authentication/authorization decisions.
> 

The only thing I use the user_id cookie for is to tag notes entered in a 
database with it. I am still using the default CAS authentication filters etc.. 
The extra filter I added was to give me a way of retrieving the Net id that was 
used to login. It is not used in the authentication mechanism.


>> 
>> Is this a correct approach or is there something inside CAS that is already 
>> canned that I should be using?
>> 
>> thanks and sorry for the noob question..
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