Hello list!
First of all, this maybe better suited for the dev list, but a quick
peek only showed svn log mails etc soo.. Sending here instead, let me
know if its wrong!
We're having a problem related to Tomcat, in a pretty unusual
scenario. Basicly the problem is with old expired sessions, and
reading session ID from URL instead of cookie.
An example, in our case browser A is a main browser, and browser B is
a slave "browser" (actually only a webkit rendering engine) which we
only call with an URL to show a specific page, and we do not have
control over cookies in browser B.
1. Browser A goes to our site, gets a new session, authenticates etc.
2. Browser A spawns browser B with url http://example.com/someresource;jsessionid=
<the session ID from browser A's cookie>
3. Browser B loads the page, no session cookie provided since its
freshly started, and gets the correct session.
Now, lets say both browsers are idle for awhile, enough for the
session to timeout
1. Browser A does some activity again, noticing that he got a new
JSESSIONID cookie and re-authenticates in the new session.
2. Browser A spawns browser B with an url containing the new jsessionid
3 (this is where the problem is). Browser B loads the page, this time
with its old jsessionid cookie, and also the new jsessionid on the URL.
So, browser B sends both the old session ID in the cookie (which is an
expired session), and the new sessionid on the URL. This confuses
tomcat.
In catalina/connector/Request.java and CoyoteAdaptor, we first check
for a sessino ID on the URL, store it in Request, and then we check
for a cookie, and if we got one, we just overwrite the session ID
from the URL.
My solution? The attached patch!
Now, what I'd like to know, can anyone of you developers see any nasty
side effects that I might have missed about this?
One thing that was concerned about was that it would introduce session
hijacking risks, but the only difference is that the evildoer have to
erase his (already expired) cookie.. Normal tomcat accepts jsessionid
on URL anyway, as long as there is no cookie, so that should not be a
security concern..
Well, thanks for any ideas and input, and for Tomcat ofcourse!
Best regards
Johan Ström
Headweb AB
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