My question is If I am hosting my website in HTTPS connection then could the cookie still be potentially stolen by an attacker to perform man in the middle attack?
In an HTTP connection, the attacker might intercept the cookie and can hijack a victim's session. So if the attacker can carry out a man in the middle attack, he can force the victim to make an http request and steal the cookie.
So does this risk is still there in the HTTPS connection? Or how can I make it more secure so that the attacker cannot steal the cookie?
The answer is YES.
Not sure if I am explaining this well enough.
But take a look at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Public_Key_Pinning
On an extra note:-
The cookie will reside on the user end and HTTPS just specifies that the connection that will be used between the two ends will be encrypted and an SSL certificate is used.
SSL certificates are what enable websites to move from HTTP to HTTPS, which is more secure. An SSL certificate is a data file hosted in a website's origin server. SSL certificates make SSL/TLS encryption possible, and they contain the website's public key and the website's identity, along with related information.
Or how can I make it more secure so that the attacker cannot steal the
cookie?
You must declare that on web.config using the requireSSL to force cookie only on secure connections
<httpCookies domain="domain.com" requireSSL="true"/>
more to read : Can some hacker steal a web browser cookie from a user and login with that name on a web site?
Related
Having a HTTPS is good for websites, if there is any confidential data is handled.
But now-a-days even, Content management sites too having the Https.
Is there any reason behind it.
Any kind of advantage (like security or related to search optimization etc.) will we get, if a normal (static content/dynamic content) website is having the Https.
Could some one share some input in this.
Google has taken a strict stance to ensure that it protects the privacy of their consumers. Security, they say, has always been “a top priority” for them.
Here's What Is the Overall HTTPS SEO Impact
Encrypting HTTP over SSL not only secures traffic, but it tells your browser that the site you're visiting has been verified by a Certificate Authority.
You browser has a store containing the public keys of all the Certificate Authorities it trusts. When you visit a HTTPS site, the SSL certificate states which Certificated Authority issued their cert.
Your browser uses the public key of that Certificate Authority to try and decrypt the certificate. If this works - the site can be trusted.
I could find any quick answer on google. Most probably the answer lies somewhere in RFC docs on http or https however I just couldn't (too time consuming ) get those information.
So here is the question:
Is the content of a webpage served through HTTP signed digitally by the server ? Same question for HTTPS.
If yes, how does it work correctly when using a proxy ? In my opinion the proxy could tamper the data, sign the tampered data with it's own private key, and claim that the corresponding proxy's public key is actually the genuine public key of the original server ? I am assuming that the client can't check the original server's public key, because there is a proxy which could lie.
I am sorry if this is a dump question and easy searchable on the internet, but every answer I found posed some doubts to me.
Thanks for your help :)
Content sent via HTTPS is encrypted, clients verify the authenticity of the host certificates with whom they are communicating. The server uses a TLS/SSL key/certificate which is signed by certificate authorities (CA) The CAs make sure that they only sign the certificates of the rightful owners of a domain. The certificates of the CAs them-self are installed in you browser/OS. By using these pre-installed certificates, the browser can check if the key used by the remote server is signed by a trusted CA.
A man-in-the-middle does not have the original key, nor another key signed by a CA for the domain in question. Therefore, a man-in-the-middle cannot modify the content without breaking HTTPS.
On the other hand, if you want to use a proxy to cache requests, the proxy can terminate the HTTPS connections. This means the proxy has its own connection to the server and verifies the certificates. In order to secure the connection to the client, the proxy acts as a CA and uses a HTTPS connection with self-signed certificates. To avoid that your browser complains about an insecure connection, you need to install the proxies own CA certificate.
HTTP content is not signed and can be tampered with.
Edit 2018-06-15:
I wasn't really precise with the term "signed" here. The server does not actually sign the content it sends. This means if you store the responses from the server, you cannot prove that they came from that server, in other words: standard TLS dose not provide non-repudiation. However, the authenticity of the server is established during the handshake. The client encrypts a master-key with the servers public key. Only servers in possession of the private key can decrypt the master-key and derive session keys from them.
CAs, on the other hand, actually sign the certificates. A CA cannot validly deny that it signed for the authenticity of a server certificate.
when we use https.........for example to send login credentials(https://example.com?username=aaaa&password=aaaa123). HTTPS encrypts the data using SSL certificate. So the url will be encrypted string. I am giving two requests with the same url(https://example.com?username=aaaa&password=aaaa123). On every request the url will be encrypted. Will the encrypted url of the first request be same as the encrypted url of the second request? Is the SSL certificate going to be different everytime btween client and server?
Thanks,
Iqbal
Will the encrypted url of the first request be same as the encrypted url of the second request?
The URL will be the same, because you said so. If you're asking whether the encryption of the URL will be different, the question is meaningless. It's impossible for anyone to tell, because the entire request is encrypted, so it is impossible to pick out the part that consists of the encrypted URL.
Is the SSL certificate going to be different everytime btween client and server?
The SSL certificate is the same for the entire SSL session, which persists beyond the current connection for as long as both client and server remember it.
I plan to run the logged-in portion of my app in HTTPS, starting with from the log-in screen. Once the user is logged-in and continues his session entirely in HTTPS, how could a MITM attack be performed? Isn't this kind of attack dependent on figuring out what the two parties are saying?
I'm using asp.net with WCF services, and later will port to Azure.
Thanks.
If your login session is encrypted with HTTPS, then you're secure against MITM attacks. The client will send data to the server encrypted using the server's public key, which can only be decrypted with the server's private key. The client and server will then use this secure channel to agree on a secret key to use for their communication.
The MITM attacker cannot get at the private key because it's private. They can't present a certificate for the target domain because certificates can only be obtained from a CA, and (theoretically) the CAs your browser trusts won't sign a certificate for a domain unless they prove they own it. They can't get at the session key, so a MITM attack is impossible.
I see facebook sends cookies over http. How are they secure from hijacking? If I were to copy the cookie onto another computer would I be logged in?
You've just described Session Hijacking, and it is a real security issue. It can be avoided in a number of ways. The simplest way to secure the cookies, though, is to ensure they're encrypted over the wire by using HTTPS rather than HTTP.
Cookies sent over HTTP (port 80) are not secure as the HTTP protocol is not encrypted.
Cookies sent over HTTPS (port 443) are secure as HTTPS is encrypted.
So, if Facebook sends/receives cookies via HTTP, they can be stolen and used nefariously.
Cookies sent over HTTP are unsecure, those sent over HTTPS are a bit more secure than HTTP, however they can still be stolen since there are a few methods discovered lately to hack SSL. A complete writeup on session hijacking and all of the session hijacking attacks can be found here: http://cleverlogic.net/tutorials/session-hijacking-0. There is also a bit on preventing Session Hijacking.