(apologies if this goes through multiple times, it's been almost 24  
hrs and I haven't seen my original post)

First of all, I love the new cookie-based sessions. Thanks bitsweat.  
I just have an architectural question / suggestion.

The CookieStore takes great care to provide integrity of session  
data, but we seem to have lost confidentiality in the process. The  
server-side storage methods had the implicit advantage of keeping the  
session data secret, but I don't know if this was intentional or just  
an unintended consequence.

Would anyone see a disadvantage to symmetrically encrypting the  
cookie data rather than signing it with an HMAC?

As far as I can think, this would retain all of the benefits of the  
current arrangement while obscuring the session data from a  
potentially untrusted client. (Not that untrusted-client is the  
normal way of things, but I tend to think fail-secure.) I don't think  
we need the full authenticity that an HMAC provides, since we're not  
trying to prove session authenticity to anyone other than the server  
that generated the session.

Thanks!
--be
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby 
on Rails: Core" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at 
http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-core?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Reply via email to