NAME
Session::Storage::Secure - Encrypted, expiring, compressed, serialized
session data with integrity
VERSION
version 1.000
SYNOPSIS
my $store = Session::Storage::Secure->new(
secret_key => "your pass phrase here",
default_duration => 86400 * 7,
);
my $encoded = $store->encode( $data, $expires );
my $decoded = $store->decode( $encoded );
DESCRIPTION
This module implements a secure way to encode session data. It is
primarily intended for storing session data in browser cookies, but
could be used with other backend storage where security of stored
session data is important.
Features include:
* Data serialization and compression using Sereal
* Data encryption using AES with a unique derived key per encoded
session
* Enforced expiration timestamp (optional)
* Integrity protected with a message authentication code (MAC)
The storage protocol used in this module is based heavily on A Secure
Cookie Protocol
by Alex Liu and others. Liu proposes a session cookie value as follows:
user|expiration|E(data,k)|HMAC(user|expiration|data|ssl-key,k)
where
| denotes concatenation with a separator character
E(p,q) is a symmetric encryption of p with key q
HMAC(p,q) is a keyed message hash of p with key q
k is HMAC(user|expiration, sk)
sk is a secret key shared by all servers
ssl-key is an SSL session key
Because SSL session keys are not readily available (and SSL termination
may happen prior to the application server), we omit "ssl-key". This
weakens protection against replay attacks if an attacker can break the
SSL session key and intercept messages.
Using "user" and "expiration" to generate the encryption and MAC keys
was a method proposed to ensure unique keys to defeat volume attacks
against the secret key. Rather than rely on those for uniqueness (with
the unfortunate side effect of revealing user names and prohibiting
anonymous sessions), we replace "user" with a cryptographically-strong
random salt value.
The original proposal also calculates a MAC based on unencrypted data.
We instead calculate the MAC based on the encrypted data. This avoids an
extra step decrypting invalid messages. Because the salt is already
encoded into the key, we omit it from the MAC input.
Therefore, the session storage protocol used by this module is as
follows:
salt|expiration|E(data,k)|HMAC(expiration|E(data,k),k)
where
| denotes concatenation with a separator character
E(p,q) is a symmetric encryption of p with key q
HMAC(p,q) is a keyed message hash of p with key q
k is HMAC(salt, sk)
sk is a secret key shared by all servers
The salt value is generated using Math::Random::ISAAC::XS, seeded from
Crypt::URandom.
The HMAC algorithm is "hmac_sha256" from Digest::SHA. Encryption is done
by Crypt::CBC using Crypt::Rijndael (AES). The ciphertext and MAC's in
the cookie are Base64 encoded by MIME::Base64 by default.
During session retrieval, if the MAC does not authenticate or if the
expiration is set and in the past, the session will be discarded.
ATTRIBUTES
secret_key (required)
This is used to secure the session data. The encryption and message
authentication key is derived from this using a one-way function.
Changing it will invalidate all sessions.
default_duration
Number of seconds for which the session may be considered valid. If an
expiration is not provided to "encode", this is used instead to expire
the session after a period of time. It is unset by default, meaning that
session expiration is not capped.
old_secrets
An optional array reference of strings containing old secret keys no
longer used for encryption but still supported for decrypting session
data.
separator
A character used to separate fields. It defaults to "~".
sereal_encoder_options
A hash reference with constructor arguments for Sereal::Encoder.
Defaults to "{ snappy => 1, croak_on_bless => 1 }".
sereal_decoder_options
A hash reference with constructor arguments for Sereal::Decoder.
Defaults to "{ refuse_objects => 1, validate_utf8 => 1 }".
transport_encoder
A code reference to convert binary data elements (the encrypted data and
the MAC) into a transport-safe form. Defaults to
MIME::Base64::encode_base64url. The output must not include the
"separator" attribute used to delimit fields.
transport_decoder
A code reference to extract binary data (the encrypted data and the MAC)
from a transport-safe form. It must be the complement to "encode".
Defaults to MIME::Base64::decode_base64url.
protocol_version
An integer representing the protocol used by "Session::Storage::Secure".
Protocol 1 was the initial version, which used a now-deprecated mode of
Crypt::CBC. Protocol 2 is the current default.
METHODS
encode
my $string = $store->encode( $data, $expires );
The $data argument should be a reference to a data structure. By
default, it must not contain objects. (See "Objects not stored by
default" for rationale and alternatives.) If it is undefined, an empty
hash reference will be encoded instead.
The optional $expires argument should be the session expiration time
expressed as epoch seconds. If the $expires time is in the past, the
$data argument is cleared and an empty hash reference is encoded and
returned. If no $expires is given, then if the "default_duration"
attribute is set, it will be used to calculate an expiration time.
The method returns a string that securely encodes the session data. All
binary components are protected via the "transport_encoder" attribute.
An exception is thrown on any errors.
decode
my $data = $store->decode( $string );
The $string argument must be the output of "encode".
If the message integrity check fails or if expiration exists and is in
the past, the method returns undef or an empty list (depending on
context).
An exception is thrown on any errors.
LIMITATIONS
Secret key
You must protect the secret key, of course. Rekeying periodically would
improve security. Rekeying also invalidates all existing sessions unless
the "old_secrets" attribute contains old encryption keys still used for
decryption. In a multi-node application, all nodes must share the same
secret key.
Session size
If storing the encoded session in a cookie, keep in mind that cookies
must fit within 4k, so don't store too much data. This module uses
Sereal for serialization and enables the "snappy" compression option.
Sereal plus Snappy appears to be one of the fastest and most compact
serialization options for Perl, according to the Sereal benchmarks
However, nothing prevents the encoded output from exceeding 4k.
Applications must check for this condition and handle it appropriately
with an error or by splitting the value across multiple cookies.
Objects not stored by default
The default Sereal options do not allow storing objects because object
deserialization can have undesirable side effects, including potentially
fatal errors if a class is not available at deserialization time or if
internal class structures changed from when the session data was
serialized to when it was deserialized. Applications should take steps
to deflate/inflate objects before storing them in session data.
Alternatively, applications can change "sereal_encoder_options" and
"sereal_decoder_options" to allow object serialization or other object
transformations and accept the risks of doing so.
SECURITY
Storing encrypted session data within a browser cookie avoids latency
and overhead of backend session storage, but has several additional
security considerations.
Transport security
If using cookies to store session data, an attacker could intercept
cookies and replay them to impersonate a valid user regardless of
encryption. SSL encryption of the transport channel is strongly
recommended.
Cookie replay
Because all session state is maintained in the session cookie, an
attacker or malicious user could replay an old cookie to return to a
previous state. Cookie-based sessions should not be used for recording
incremental steps in a transaction or to record "negative rights".
Because cookie expiration happens on the client-side, an attacker or
malicious user could replay a cookie after its scheduled expiration
date. It is strongly recommended to set "cookie_duration" or
"default_duration" to limit the window of opportunity for such replay
attacks.
Session authentication
A compromised secret key could be used to construct valid messages
appearing to be from any user. Applications should take extra steps in
their use of session data to ensure that sessions are authenticated to
the user.
One simple approach could be to store a hash of the user's hashed
password in the session on login and to verify it on each request.
# on login
my $hashed_pw = bcrypt( $password, $salt );
if ( $hashed_pw eq $hashed_pw_from_db ) {
session user => $user;
session auth => bcrypt( $hashed_pw, $salt ) );
}
# on each request
if ( bcrypt( $hashed_pw_from_db, $salt ) ne session("auth") ) {
context->destroy_session;
}
The downside of this is that if there is a read-only attack against the
database (SQL injection or leaked backup dump) and the secret key is
compromised, then an attacker can forge a cookie to impersonate any
user.
A more secure approach suggested by Stephen Murdoch in Hardened
Stateless Session Cookies
store an iterated hash of the hashed password in the database and use
the hashed password itself within the session.
# on login
my $hashed_pw = bcrypt( $password, $salt );
if ( bcrypt( $hashed_pw, $salt ) eq $double_hashed_pw_from_db ) {
session user => $user;
session auth => $hashed_pw;
}
# on each request
if ( $double_hashed_pw_from_db ne bcrypt( session("auth"), $salt ) ) {
context->destroy_session;
}
This latter approach means that even a compromise of the secret key and
the database contents can't be used to impersonate a user because doing
so would requiring reversing a one-way hash to determine the correct
authenticator to put into the forged cookie.
Both methods require an additional database read per request. This
diminishes some of the scalability benefits of storing session data in a
cookie, but the read could be cached and there is still no database
write needed to store session data.
SEE ALSO
Papers on secure cookies and cookie session storage:
* Liu, Alex X., et al., A Secure Cookie Protocol
df>
* Murdoch, Stephen J., Hardened Stateless Session Cookies
* Fu, Kevin, et al., Dos and Don'ts of Client Authentication on the
CPAN modules implementing cookie session storage:
* Catalyst::Plugin::CookiedSession -- encryption only
* Dancer::Session::Cookie -- Dancer 1, encryption only
* Dancer::SessionFactory::Cookie -- Dancer 2, forthcoming, based on
this module
* HTTP::CryptoCookie -- encryption only
* Mojolicious::Sessions -- MAC only
* Plack::Middleware::Session::Cookie -- MAC only
* Plack::Middleware::Session::SerializedCookie -- really just a
framework and you provide the guts with callbacks
Related CPAN modules that offer frameworks for serializing and
encrypting data, but without features relevant for sessions like
expiration and unique keying.
* Crypt::Util
* Data::Serializer
AUTHOR
David Golden <dagolden@cpan.org>
CONTRIBUTORS
* Petr Písař <ppisar@redhat.com>
* Tom Hukins <tom@eborcom.com>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is Copyright (c) 2013 by David Golden.
This is free software, licensed under:
The Apache License, Version 2.0, January 2004