this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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So what happened:
Am I right?
I'm old-school developer/programmer and it seems that web is peace of sheet. Basic security stuff violated:
Am I right? Correct me if I'm wrong.
Again, web is peace of sheet. This would never happen in desktop/server application. Any of the bullet points above would prevent this from happening. Even if the previous bullet point failed to do its job. Am I too naïve? Maybe.
Marek.
100%. Always act as though user provided content is malicious.
Uh... what? JavaScript is a client-side language (unless you're using NodeJS, which Lemmy is not). Which means JavaScript runs in the browser. And that JavaScript has access to cookies, that's just a basic part of how web browsers work. Lemmy can't do anything to prevent that.
Again, Lemmy can't do anything about that. Once there's a vulnerability that allows an attacker to inject arbitrary JS into the site, Lemmy can't do anything to prevent that JS from making requests.
On the backend you'd still have a single system which kind of defeats the purpose. Unless you're proposing a completely independent backend? Because that would be a massive PITA to build and would drastically increase the system's complexity and reduce maintainability.
Yes and No. Cookies could be accessed by JS on the client. BUT. When the cookie is sent by the server with additional
HttpOnly
header, then the cookie cannot be accessed from JS. Look at Lemmy GitHub issue, they discuss exactly this. Lemmy server absolutely has power to prevent this.I believe they can. But I'm not sure about this one. The server could send a response preventing the web browser to request content from other domains. Banks are using this. There was an attack years ago when attacker created a web page with i-frame in it. The i-frame was full screen to confuse the victim it is actually using the Banks site and not the attacker site. The bank web site was inside the inner i-frame, the code in the outer frame then had access to sensitive data in the inner frame. I believe there are HTTP response headers that instruct the web browser to not allow this. But I'm not sure I remember how exactly this works.
Yes, it would be more costly, but more secure. It is trade-off, which one is more important to you? In case of chat/blog/forum app such as Lemmy I prefer cheap, in case of my Bank website I prefer secure.
Oh I forgot another line of defense / basic security mitigation. If a server produces an access token (such as JWT or any other old school cookie / session ID), pair it with an IP address. So in case of cookie theft, the attacker cannot use this cookie from his computer (IP address). If the IP changes (mobile / WiFi / ADSL / whatever), the legitimate user should log-in again, now storing two auth cookies. In case of another IP change, no problemo, one of the stored cookies will work. Of course limit validity of the cookie in time (lets, say, keep it valid only for a day or for a week or so).
I'm sorry you want a mobile user to login every time their IP address changes? Why bother to keep them authenticated at all, just make them login for every web request. /s
It is trade-off between convenience and security. With my approach stolen cookies are not usable from different computer / IP, the attacker needs additional work, he needs the victim computer to do the harm, his computer cannot do any harm. The downside is the user needs another log-in in case of his external IP changes. How often is it? Switch between mobile/WiFi. Otherwise ... almost never ... maybe 1x per day? I'm not proposing to log-out the user after IP change, I'm proposing to keep multiple sessions (on server) / auth cookies (on client) for each IPv4 or IPv6 prefix (let's say /56).
MOVEit would suggest otherwise.