Re: modify non-persistent cookies

At 03:05 PM 12/17/2002 -0800, securityarchitect@hush.com wrote:

>The only difference between the a persistent cookie and non-persistent

Precisely so. The cookie is nothing more than some data returned by the server: there is no way of knowing what will happen to it at the client side.

>If there is no expires element (time) defined then the cookie is (should

And herein lies the bogus assumption that makes trouble for so many web sites. Once the cookie leaves the server, the server has no control over what happens to it. It is unsafe to assume that it will be discarded at any future point in time, or that it will be returned intact (or at all, for that matter). Doing so means trusting the user and the client software to behave.

[snip]
>As others have suggested the usual way is to intercept the HTTP stream

Actually, tools like Achilles or the @Stake proxy will allow you to modify a browser's request on the way out, also. Likewise, you can roll your own cookie mangler with wget (might need sslproxy) or the perl HTTP request module.

--Foofus. Received on Tue Dec 17 19:04:07 2002

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