Github user rsafonseca commented on the pull request:
https://github.com/apache/cloudstack/pull/308#issuecomment-109981697
@vadimkim
Let me try to break it down:
In the past, with the purpose of preventing a browser vulnerability,
session persistence was completely broken, so currently, there is no session
persistence with either HTTP or HTTPS from ACS 4.3.x to 4.6.x, that is, if you
press F5, you will be logged out.
This fix reenables persistence, and does so while improving on the security
measure that was the objective that led to session persistence being broken.
With this patch, both HTTP and HTTPS are working fine with session
persistence, and the browser vulnerability (XSS attack) is eliminated. SSL
would not protect against a XSS attack, it would only protect from the fact
that you are sending your credentials and sessionkey unencrypted from your
machine to the server. If you are doing so over a secure network that you
trust, using SSL might even be irrelevant, depending on the situation. So, SSL
will only protect your credentials/session on the transport layer, other nasty
XSS scripts might still gain access to whatever is stored in your browser.
Setting the cookie as HttpOnly prevents your own browser from reading it, and
thus makes that information safe from XSS.
If you're having issues with a reverse proxy in front of it, the issue is
probably with the reverse proxy or browser config... here's where i see it
might be going wrong on your setup:
- Proxy is destroying the cookie;
- Proxy is not allowing the cookie in the first place;
- Proxy if forcing a new session to be generated;
- Browser isn't allowing cookies on the https url (perhaps configured
manually to always reject cookies and an exception for the http:// cloudstack
url ?)
- Proxy might be delivering a cached version of cloudStack.js without the
fix;
Could you share some more info on your reverse proxy setup? I'll can try to
reproduce your issue and give you a hand :)
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