Security Basics mailing list archives

PHP Sessions


From: xbennx () hotmail co uk
Date: 21 Sep 2006 16:11:03 -0000

I've posted on this topic before but I still have some unanswered questions...

I keep hearing a lot about PHP session ID's and that an attacker can easily recreate a valid session id and log in as 
another user. Of course this is dependent on the way the system works and whats used to generate the session id. This I 
understand.

What I fail to understand is why people use session ID's and pass them via the query string at all? On a site that I 
maintain, I store the session ID in a session variable and then check that rather than a session ID passed through the 
query string. This way the user cannot modify the session ID and therefore only valid sessions are accepted.

Am I missing something here? Is there a way for a malicious user to edit session variables?

Any comments will be appreciated

Thanks,

Benn

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