On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Luke Plant <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Monday 04 January 2010 21:45:41 jcampbell1 wrote:
>
>> I am not that familiar with your framework, but I think a signed
>> cookie should use http only cookies by default.  There is no valid
>> reason for a script to read a cookie that it can't verify.  http
>>  only cookies significantly decrease the surface area of XSS
>>  attacks.
>
> I can think of various circumstances where it might be useful and
> harmless.  For example, if the signed cookie stored the user's login
> name, and some client side javascript used the login name for some
> convenience feature, like highlighting the login name wherever it
> appeared on the page.
>
> To generalise, the issue of using HttpOnly cookies is orthogonal to
> whether they are signed or not, because the value of the cookie can be
> used in multiple ways, not all of which will depend on the value being
> verified.
>
> Luke
>
> --
> "Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain
> empties."
>
> Luke Plant || http://lukeplant.me.uk/
>
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>

So, thinking out loud here, I know the DSF has a policy of hands of in
the development of Django, but I was thinking (out loud) that perhaps
it would be sensible for the DSF to hire someone to do a security
audit of some of this stuff.  I have 0 clue about the particulars of
how anything like that works, but it was just a thought that occurred
to me.

Alex

-- 
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your
right to say it." -- Voltaire
"The people's good is the highest law." -- Cicero
"Code can always be simpler than you think, but never as simple as you
want" -- Me

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