Client side sessions

Question

I want the clients of several related web apps to hold their own authentication state. This improves scalability, because no session replication between cluster nodes is needed. And it makes integration of different server technologies like Java Servlets and PHP easier.

My plan is as follows:

1. Set a signed and encrypted cookie with the user name and session expiration time after client authentication.
2. When the client sends a request, the server decrypts and validates the cookie and grants or denies access depending on the cookie values.
3. The session expiration will be updated through resetting the cookie.

All servers that want to use the session have only to know the cookie mechanism and the decryption key. See also: Session state in the client tier

Is this approach ok? Would it be possible to integrate it into a servlet container / application Server so that it is transparent to the applications? A servlet should be able to use HttpServletRequest#getRemoteUser() for example. Is this possible? Or would I need something above the container level like Spring Security? Are there any existing libraries for client side session management?

Answer 1

Not a good idea. Storing vital data like session expiry and user name entirely on client side is too dangerous IMO, encrypted or not. Even if the concept is technically safe in itself (I can't answer that in depth, I'm no encryption expert), a break-in could be facilitated without compromising your server, just by acquiring your encryption key.

Somebody who gets hold of the key could generate session cookies at will, impersonating any user for any length of time, something the classical session concept is designed to prevent.

There are better and scalable solutions for this problem. Why not, for instance, set up a central session verification instance that all associated servers and services can poll? Look around on the web, I am 100% sure there are ready-made solutions addressing your needs.