I am creating a simple PHP application which uses JQuery and AJAX to call (GET method) a PHP script with some parameters; username and password. The application uses SSL.
When tracing the request in Google Chrome Developer tools, I see the following request URL:
https://application.com/php/login.php?username=John&password=Simple1234
I used WireShark to make sure the parameters are encrypted when sending the request, and I don't see any obvious request-headers.
Just to be a 100% sure. Does SSL also encrypt parameters which are included in the header and am I doing this the right way? I found some duplicate questions about this topic, but none of them had a specific example.
Yes but it is a bad idea to use $_GET for such sensitiv data.
This data would be saved in the server logs
This data would be saved in the browser cache
Even Screenshots taken while the login process could contain this data
Also even if the data is encrypted it is still "availble" and could be decrypted.
Use $_POST instead.
This article will show the risks:
https://blog.httpwatch.com/2009/02/20/how-secure-are-query-strings-over-https/
The fact that it is PHP or AJAX does not matter here.
The only thing that matters is the URL: is it https:// or http://?
If it is https:// since it means it is HTTPS(!) which means in summary HTTP inside TLS (SSL is dead since 20 years, its successor is TLS).
TLS encrypts everything (it does other things too but here we discuss only confidentiality needs), if implemented and configured correctly (I want to emphasize that because it is not a silver bullet, putting a sticker "TLS" is not enough, for example there is the whole issue of certificates verification, as authentication may be deemed more important that confidentiality in fact, because what do you gain if you encrypt everything towards an endpoint you are not 100% sure it is the valid one?)
What you see in the URL is part of the HTTP protocol. The URL will be inside the HTTP stream as GET /php/login.php?..., just before other headers. Same if using other HTTP methods. Since it is inside HTTP, it is inside TLS, hence encrypted.
The only thing visible by a passive monitor will be the domain name (both for DNS queries before the HTTPS connection - DNS over HTTPS/TLS solves that - and because of the SNI extension at the beginning of the TLS handshake - and encrypted SNI, still being designed, will solve that).
Related
How safe is it to pass passwords / username in POST or GET requests to an external server?
I will use PHP / CURL and I have second toughts about security.
Alternatives will be considered aswell!
If you use HTTP without SSL encryption, everything is transmitted in the clear, which includes the full URL, the HTTP request/response headers, and the body of the POST request and response.
If you place a password in the GET parameters, it will additionally be displayed in the address bar and quite likely saved in browser history, proxy server logs, and sent to other websites in the referrer header. Sending the password in the POST body or in the standard Authorization header avoids this obvious problem, but it is still visible to an observer who can sniff or proxy your traffic.
Digest Authentication avoids transmitting the password in the clear, and only a non-reusable signature is exposed to the outside observer. It is still vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks; see HTTP Digest Authentication versus SSL.
The correct solution is to use an SSL certificate and exclusively use HTTPS. When you do so, the URL string, HTTP headers, and POST body are all encrypted, and the browser verifies that no third party is operating a server in the middle. HTTP Basic Authentication is permissible in this case.
By themselves, not necessarily. You shouldn't use GET for things aside from queries, in general because they can get stored on the user's browser. POST is relatively easy to encrypt using libraries, as you shouldn't implement your own encryption.
Also, if you get an SSL, that would help. If you use HTTPS (rather than HTTP), then it will be even more secure.
You didn't give many details as to what the page was (read: the language) so I can't really recommend a good encryption library, but just Google it and I'm sure you'll find something.
I've read a lot of questions here about how login can be connected to SSL and so on, but still the idea is not that clear. Based on what I read that I need to have an SSL setup and installed on my web server so that I can use the https secure connection on the page where a login is going to be used. Ok, I have done that part,but still wondering what to include in the login code in order to have the entire session must be over https. in some sites they mention that I have to add this code tep_href_link(FILENAME_ACCOUNT, '', 'SSL') so that the php login page or code be secure.
any comments will be appreciated.
Thanks a lot.
Update: I believe that this code is very important to add so that the login page goes on the https. if(!isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']))
{
header("location: https://" . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
}
HTTPS represents using an algorithm to secure transport layer communications that encrypts what the browser and server are sending each other. The encrypted form that is sent over the network is expensive computationally to turn back into it's original content, unless whoever is decrypting the ciphertext has the paired private key (or... a "computationally weak" algorithm was used).
This is point to point (client sends request to server, server accepts, determines response, sends response), so the browser and server first exchange public keys that represent what the data you are sending or receiving is going to be "scrambled" against. A private key is held by the public key issuer that allows that computer to "descramble" and obtain the original content that was sent to the receiver.
So when you create a private/public key pair, the private key is kept (in confidence and secret) on the server, and the related public key is sent to the browser. The browser, likewise, does the same thing and transmits a public key to the server.
"Protecting" sensitive information is not all that's going on; you may also use SSL/TLS to prevent tampering with data, for example, or even as an additional verification step.
To get HTTPS setup and available for you to use, you need to:
Procure a public/private key (signing by a certificate authority, or CA, is potentially optional depending on your end users).
Install it into the key store on the server that is available to your web server. OpenSSL is used for both of these steps in many cases.
Setup your system to use HTTPS URLs (for all resources, not just a <form action="https://...">s).
Couple of notes:
Browsers have their own certificates, so don't worry about that.
Many CMS' and frameworks allow you to specify HTTPS at the application layer
You can use WireShark to inspect what your computer is actually sending and receiving. This can be very illuminating, especially in combination with viewing the request/response in Firebug or Chrome Net consoles.
PHP online manual has the OpenSSL "book". Here is an example of how CodeIgniter handles configuring HTTPS at the application level.
There's various tutorials on how to setup SSL on a LAMP stack. Here is a tutorial on WAMP2 HTTPS and SSL Setup if you just need a development environment.
If you have a shared hosting environment, you may not be able to do the SSL setup on the server yourself; that may be handled by the server administrator. Check with your host. DreamHost, for example, has extensive docs.
Um, on a quick google, this function (tep_href_link) appears to be part of osCommerce. If your site has an SSL certificate setup properly, forcing users to an https url should be fine. If you don't know how to do that look into Location headers or mod_rewrite.
Also, as an aside, one thing you will need to do, is to ensure all links on the page are going over https. That will increase the likelihood of getting the green lock or w/e when a user comes to the page, assuming the cert isn't self-signed.
I building a service which be served via https.
I would like to know if password (or any specific key) transmitted in curl option CURLOPT_USERPWD are safe when data is "over the wire" ?
ALL data send via HTTPS is encrypted. This means that it is very difficult (but not impossible) for anyone between the server and the client to view the raw data of the request.
If you want to fully understand the potential ramifications of using HTTP basic auth, you should fully understand how it works.
Since HTTP is a plain text protocol, it is very insecure. HTTPS is simply HTTP using an encrypted socket - which means that the request/response format itself is completely unchanged. If you can view the plain-text version of the request, you can glean from it whatever information you like. But, using SSL/TLS makes it very difficult to view the plain-text version.
HTTP Basic auth is inherently vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks and should never be used over an unencrypted connection, but using HTTPS makes it fairly safe. The only consideration is that the server will be able to view the password in plain text - if you don't want this to happen, you should use Digest auth, HTTPS or otherwise.
Yes, the password won't be visible, because it is sent encrypted over the network, but most probably (not completely sure), the script that runs on the target website (the service in your case), will be able to see your password.
How would you use https ?, would sending information via GET and POST be any different while using https ?
Any information and examples on how https is used in php for something simple like a secure login would be useful,
Thank you!
It will be no different for your php scripts, the encryption and decryption is done transparently on another layer.
Both GET and POST get encrypted, but GET will leave a trace in the web server log files.
HTTPS is handled at the SSL/TLS Layer, not at the Application Layer (HTTP). Your server will handle it as aularon was saying.
SSL and/or HTTPS is used to provide some level of confidentiality for data in transit between the web users and the web server. It can also be used to provide a level of confidence that the site the users are communicating with is in fact the one they intend to be.
In order to use SSL, you'll need to configure these capabilities on the server itself, which would include either purchasing (an authority-signed) or creating (a self-signed) certificate. If you create your own self-signed certificate, the level of confidence that the site is the intended one is significantly reduced for your users.
PHP
Once your webserver is able to serve SSL-protected pages, PHP will continue to operate as usual. Things to look out for are port numbers (normal HTTP is usually on port 80, while HTTPS traffic is usually on port 443), if your code relies on them.
GET & POST Data
Pierre 303 is correct, GET data may end up in the logs, and POST data will not, but this is no different than a non-SSL web server. SSL is meant to protect data in transit, it does nothing to protect you and your customers from web servers and their administrators that you may not trust.
Secure Login
There is also a performance hit (normally) when using SSL, so, some sites will configure their pages to only use https when the user is sending sensitive information, for example, their password or credit card details, etc. Other traffic would continue to use the normal, http server.
If this is the sort of thing you'd like to do, you'll want to ensure that your login form in HTML uses a ACTION that points to the https server's pages. Once the server accepts this form submission, it can send a redirect to send the user back to the page they requested using just http again.
Just ensure you're sending the correct headings when allowing files to be downloaded over ssl... IE can be a bit quirky. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323308 for details of how to resolve
I know next to nothing when it comes to the how and why of https connections. Obviously, when I'm transmitting secure data like passwords or especially credit card information, https is a critical tool. What do I need to know about it, though? What are the most common mistakes you see developers making when they implement it in their projects? Are there times when https is just a bad idea? Thanks!
An HTTPS, or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate is served for a site, and is typically signed by a Certificate Authority (CA), which is effectively a trusted 3rd party that verifies some basic details about your site, and certifies it for use in browsers. If your browser trusts the CA, then it trusts any certificates signed by that CA (this is known as the trust chain).
Each HTTP (or HTTPS) request consists of two parts: a request, and a response. When you request something through HTTPS, there are actually a few things happening in the background:
The client (browser) does a "handshake", where it requests the server's public key and identification.
At this point, the browser can check for validity (does the site name match? is the date range current? is it signed by a CA it trusts?). It can even contact the CA and make sure the certificate is valid.
The client creates a new pre-master secret, which is encrypted using the servers's public key (so only the server can decrypt it) and sent to the server
The server and client both use this pre-master secret to generate the master secret, which is then used to create a symmetric session key for the actual data exchange
Both sides send a message saying they're done the handshake
The server then processes the request normally, and then encrypts the response using the session key
If the connection is kept open, the same symmetric key will be used for each.
If a new connection is established, and both sides still have the master secret, new session keys can be generated in an 'abbreviated handshake'. Typically a browser will store a master secret until it's closed, while a server will store it for a few minutes or several hours (depending on configuration).
For more on the length of sessions see How long does an HTTPS symmetric key last?
Certificates and Hostnames
Certificates are assigned a Common Name (CN), which for HTTPS is the domain name. The CN has to match exactly, eg, a certificate with a CN of "example.com" will NOT match the domain "www.example.com", and users will get a warning in their browser.
Before SNI, it was not possible to host multiple domain names on one IP. Because the certificate is fetched before the client even sends the actual HTTP request, and the HTTP request contains the Host: header line that tells the server what URL to use, there is no way for the server to know what certificate to serve for a given request. SNI adds the hostname to part of the TLS handshake, and so as long as it's supported on both client and server (and in 2015, it is widely supported) then the server can choose the correct certificate.
Even without SNI, one way to serve multiple hostnames is with certificates that include Subject Alternative Names (SANs), which are essentially additional domains the certificate is valid for. Google uses a single certificate to secure many of it's sites, for example.
Another way is to use wildcard certificates. It is possible to get a certificate like ".example.com" in which case "www.example.com" and "foo.example.com" will both be valid for that certificate. However, note that "example.com" does not match ".example.com", and neither does "foo.bar.example.com". If you use "www.example.com" for your certificate, you should redirect anyone at "example.com" to the "www." site. If they request https://example.com, unless you host it on a separate IP and have two certificates, the will get a certificate error.
Of course, you can mix both wildcard and SANs (as long as your CA lets you do this) and get a certificate for both "example.com" and with SANs ".example.com", "example.net", and ".example.net", for example.
Forms
Strictly speaking, if you are submitting a form, it doesn't matter if the form page itself is not encrypted, as long as the submit URL goes to an https:// URL. In reality, users have been trained (at least in theory) not to submit pages unless they see the little "lock icon", so even the form itself should be served via HTTPS to get this.
Traffic and Server Load
HTTPS traffic is much bigger than its equivalent HTTP traffic (due to encryption and certificate overhead), and it also puts a bigger strain on the server (encrypting and decrypting). If you have a heavily-loaded server, it may be desirable to be very selective about what content is served using HTTPS.
Best Practices
If you're not just using HTTPS for the entire site, it should automatically redirect to HTTPS as required. Whenever a user is logged in, they should be using HTTPS, and if you're using session cookies, the cookie should have the secure flag set. This prevents interception of the session cookie, which is especially important given the popularity of open (unencrypted) wifi networks.
Any resources on the page should come from the same scheme being used for the page. If you try to fetch images from http:// when the page is loaded with HTTPS, the user will get security warnings. You should either use fully-qualified URLs, or another easy way is to use absolute URLs that do not include the hostname (eg, src="/images/foo.png") because they work for both.
This includes external resources (eg, Google Analytics)
Don't do POSTs (form submits) when changing from HTTPS to HTTP. Most browsers will flag this as a security warning.
I'm not going to go in depth on SSL in general, gregmac did a great job on that, see below ;-).
However, some of the most common (and critical) mistakes made (not specifically PHP) with regards to use of SSL/TLS:
Allowing HTTP when you should be enforcing HTTPS
Retrieving some resources over HTTP from an HTTPS page (e.g. images, IFRAMEs, etc)
Directing to HTTP page from HTTPS page unintentionally - note that this includes "fake" pages, such as "about:blank" (I've seen this used as IFRAME placeholders), this will needlessly and unpleasantly popup a warning.
Web server configured to support old, unsecure versions of SSL (e.g. SSL v2 is common, yet horribly broken)
(okay, this isn't exactly the programmer's issue, but sometimes noone else will handle it...)
Web server configured to support unsecure cipher suites (I've seen NULL ciphers only in use, which basically provides absolutely NO encryption)
(ditto)
Self-signed certificates - prevents users from verifying the site's identity.
Requesting the user's credentials from an HTTP page, even if submitting to an HTTPS page. Again, this prevents a user from validating the server's identity BEFORE giving it his password... Even if the password is transmitted encrypted, the user has no way of knowing if he's on a bogus site - or even if it WILL be encrypted.
Non-secure cookie - security-related cookies (such as sessionId, authentication token, access token, etc.) MUST be set with the "secure" attribute set. This is important! If it's not set to secure, the security cookie, e.g. SessionId, can be transmitted over HTTP (!) - and attackers can ensure this will happen - and thus allowing session hijacking etc. While you're at it (tho this is not directly related), set the HttpOnly attribute on your cookies, too (helps mitigate some XSS).
Overly permissive certificates - say you have several subdomains, but not all of them are at the same trust level. For instance, you have www.yourdomain.com, dowload.yourdomain.com, and publicaccess.yourdomain.com. So you might think about going with a wildcard certificate.... BUT you also have secure.yourdomain.com, or finance.yourdomain.com - even on a different server. publicaccess.yourdomain.com will then be able to impersonate secure.yourdomain.com....
While there may be instances where this is okay, usually you'd want some separation of privileges...
That's all I can remember right now, might re-edit it later...
As far as when is it a BAD idea to use SSL/TLS - if you have public information which is NOT intended for a specific audience (either a single user or registered members), AND you're not particular about them retrieving it specifically from the proper source (e.g. stock ticker values MUST come from an authenticated source...) - then there is no real reason to incur the overhead (and not just performance... dev/test/cert/etc).
However, if you have shared resources (e.g. same server) between your site and another MORE SENSITIVE site, then the more sensitive site should be setting the rules here.
Also, passwords (and other credentials), credit card info, etc should ALWAYS be over SSL/TLS.
Be sure that, when on an HTTPS page, all elements on the page come from an HTTPS address. This means that elements should have relative paths (e.g. "/images/banner.jpg") so that the protocol is inherited, or that you need to do a check on every page to find the protocol, and use that for all elements.
NB: This includes all outside resources (like Google Analytics javascript files)!
The only down-side I can think of is that it adds (nearly negligible) processing time for the browser and your server. I would suggest encrypting only the transfers that need to be.
I would say the most common mistakes when working with an SSL-enabled site are
The site erroneously redirects users to http from a page as https
The site doesn't automatically switch to https when it's necessary
Images and other assets on an https page are being loading via http, which will trigger a security alert from the browser. Make sure all assets are using fully-qualified URIs that specify https.
The security certificate only works for one subdomain (such as www) but your site actually uses multiple subdomains. Make sure to get a wildcard certificate if you will need it.
I would suggest any time any user data is stored in a database and communicated, use https. Consider this requirement even if the user data is mundane, because even many of these mundane details are used by that user to identify themselves on other websites. Consider all the random security questions your bank asks you (like what street do you live on?). This can be taken from address fields really easily. In this case, the data is not what you consider a password, but it might as well be. Furthermore, you can never anticipate what user data will be used for a security question elsewhere. You can also expect that with the intelligence of the average web user (think your grandmother) that that tidbit of information might make up part of that user's password somewhere else.
One pointer if you use https
make it so that if the user types
http://www.website-that-needs-https.com/etc/yadda.php
they will automatically get redirected to
https://www.website-that-needs-https.com/etc/yadda.php
(personal pet peeve)
However, if you're just doing a plain html webpage, that will be essentially a one-way transmission of information from the server to the user, don't worry about it.
All very good tip here... but I just want to add something..
Ive seen some sites that gives you a http login page and only redirect you to https after you post your username/pass.. This means the username is transmitted in the clear before the https connection is established..
In short make the page where you login from ssl, instead of posting to an ssl page.
I found that trying to <link> to a non-existent style sheet also caused security warnings. When I used the correct path, the lock icon appeared.