CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2014/ch1a 23 ss

Security Features in Rails 4.x

This wiki aims to highlight all the security features in a popular web application framework: Rails 4.x

Threats Against Web Applications

The threats against web applications include

Cookie Management

Cookies are used to maintain stateful sessions in HTTP. The cookies typically contain the user's session id which is used to identify the user. By stealing it, the attacker can use the application in the victim's name. Hence programmers should not store sensitive data in cookies. The fix is

Use SSL

SSL prevents the attacker from sniffing the cookie from the network. config.force_ssl = true

New Session Identifier

Configure Rails to issue a new session identifier and declare the old one invalid after a successful login. This prevents "Session Fixation".

Timeout Cookies

Set the expiry time stamp of the cookie to a small value.

Session Hijacking

In order to track and maintain the proper state for a user, web applications typically use sessions. These sessions provide consistency for the user, and keeps the user from needing to authenticate for each request.

There is typically a session hash and a session id.

Vulnerabilities

Session Hijacking Replay Attacks for CookieStore Sessions

Guide to Mitigation

Do not store large objects in a session. Critical data should not be stored in session.

Reference

http://blog.codeclimate.com/blog/2013/03/27/rails-insecure-defaults/

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html