Logo Questions Linux Laravel Mysql Ubuntu Git Menu
 

Creating Signed Cookies for Amazon CloudFront

Amazon has introduced Cloudfront signed cookie recently in addition to signed url.

A similar quesition has been about signed url. Apparently there is support for signed url in the cloudfront SDK

However I cannot find the support of this feature in the aws python SDK.

How can I got about to create a signed cookie?

like image 582
Anthony Kong Avatar asked Apr 01 '15 05:04

Anthony Kong


People also ask

What is signed cookies in CloudFront?

CloudFront signed cookies allow you to control who can access your content when you don't want to change your current URLs or when you want to provide access to multiple restricted files, for example, all of the files in the subscribers' area of a website.

How do I enable cookies in CloudFront?

If you want to receive cookies at your origin but you don't want CloudFront to cache the Set-Cookie headers in your origin's responses, configure your origin to add a Cache-Control header with a no-cache directive that specifies Set-Cookie as a field name. For example: Cache-Control: no-cache="Set-Cookie" .

What are signed cookies?

Signed cookies give time-limited resource access to a set of files, regardless of whether the users have Google Accounts. Signed cookies are an alternative to signed URLs. Signed cookies protect access when separately signing tens or hundreds of URLs for each user isn't feasible in your application.

What is the difference between signed URL and signed cookies?

Signed URLs take precedence over signed cookies. If you use both signed URLs and signed cookies to control access to the same files and a viewer uses a signed URL to request a file, CloudFront determines whether to return the file to the viewer based only on the signed URL.


1 Answers

I created a boto feature request to add this, but in the meantime I got it working with my django python app. Here's simple code that I've generified from my own. At the bottom is a sample django view method so you can see how I set cookies for a web page containing Cloudfront content.

import time
from boto.cloudfront import CloudFrontConnection
from boto.cloudfront.distribution import Distribution
from config import settings
import logging
from django.template.context import RequestContext
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
logger = logging.getLogger('boto')
logger.setLevel(logging.CRITICAL) #disable DEBUG logging that's enabled in AWS by default (outside of django)

AWS_ACCESS_KEY="AKABCDE1235ABCDEF22A"#SAMPLE
AWS_SECRET_KEY="a1wd2sD1A/GS8qggkXK1u8kHlh+BiLp0C3nBJ2wW" #SAMPLE
key_pair_id="APKABCDEF123ABCDEFAG" #SAMPLE
DOWNLOAD_DIST_ID = "E1ABCDEF3ABCDE" #SAMPLE replace with the ID of your Cloudfront dist from Cloudfront console

############################################
def generate_signed_cookies(resource,expire_minutes=5):
    """
    @resource   path to s3 object inside bucket(or a wildcard path,e.g. '/blah/*' or  '*')
    @expire_minutes     how many minutes before we expire these access credentials (within cookie)
    return tuple of domain used in resource URL & dict of name=>value cookies
    """
    if not resource:
        resource = 'images/*'
    dist_id = DOWNLOAD_DIST_ID
    conn = CloudFrontConnection(AWS_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_SECRET_KEY)
    dist = SignedCookiedCloudfrontDistribution(conn,dist_id)
    return dist.create_signed_cookies(resource,expire_minutes=expire_minutes)

############################################
class SignedCookiedCloudfrontDistribution():

    def __init__(self,connection,download_dist_id,cname=True):
        """
        @download_dist_id   id of your Cloudfront download distribution
        @cname          boolean True to use first domain cname, False to use 
                        cloudfront domain name, defaults to cname
                        which presumably matches your writeable cookies ( .mydomain.com)
        """
        self.download_dist = None
        self.domain = None
        try:
            download_dist = connection.get_distribution_info(download_dist_id)
            if cname and download_dist.config.cnames:
                self.domain = download_dist.config.cnames[0] #use first cname if defined
            else:
                self.domain = download_dist.domain_name
            self.download_dist = download_dist
        except Exception, ex:
            logging.error(ex)

    def get_http_resource_url(self,resource=None,secure=False):
        """
        @resource   optional path and/or filename to the resource 
                   (e.g. /mydir/somefile.txt);
                    defaults to wildcard if unset '*'
        @secure     whether to use https or http protocol for Cloudfront URL - update  
                    to match your distribution settings 
        return constructed URL
        """
        if not resource:
            resource = '*'
        protocol = "http" if not secure else "https"
        http_resource = '%s://%s/%s' % (protocol,self.domain,resource)
        return http_resource

    def create_signed_cookies(self,resource,expire_minutes=3):
        """
        generate the Cloudfront download distirbution signed cookies
        @resource   path to the file, path, or wildcard pattern to generate policy for
        @expire_minutes  number of minutes until expiration
        return      tuple with domain used within policy (so it matches 
                    cookie domain), and dict of cloudfront cookies you
                    should set in request header
        """
        http_resource = self.get_http_resource_url(resource,secure=False)    #per-file access #NOTE secure should match security settings of cloudfront distribution
    #    http_resource = self.get_http_resource_url("somedir/*")  #blanket access to all /somedir files inside my bucket
    #    http_resource = self.get_http_resource_url("*")          #blanket access to all files inside my bucket

        #generate no-whitespace json policy, then base64 encode & make url safe
        policy = Distribution._canned_policy(http_resource,SignedCookiedCloudfrontDistribution.get_expires(expire_minutes))
        encoded_policy = Distribution._url_base64_encode(policy)

        #assemble the 3 Cloudfront cookies
        signature = SignedCookiedCloudfrontDistribution.generate_signature(policy,private_key_file=settings.AMAZON_PRIV_KEY_FILE)
        cookies = {
            "CloudFront-Policy" :encoded_policy,
            "CloudFront-Signature" :signature,
            "CloudFront-Key-Pair-Id" :key_pair_id #e.g, APKA..... -> same value you use when you sign URLs with boto distribution.create_signed_url() function
        }
        return self.domain,cookies

    @staticmethod
    def get_expires(minutes):
        unixTime = time.time() + (minutes * 60)
        expires = int(unixTime)  #if not converted to int causes Malformed Policy error and has 2 decimals in value
        return expires

    @staticmethod
    def generate_signature(policy,private_key_file=None):
        """
        @policy     no-whitespace json str (NOT encoded yet)
        @private_key_file   your .pem file with which to sign the policy
        return encoded signature for use in cookie
        """
        #sign the policy - code borrowed from Distribution._create_signing_params()
        signature = Distribution._sign_string(policy, private_key_file)
        #now base64 encode the signature & make URL safe
        encoded_signature = Distribution._url_base64_encode(signature)
        return encoded_signature

############################################
def sample_django_view_method(request,template="mytemplate.html"):
    expireLen = 30 #30 minutes
    s3resource = "somepath_in_my_bucket/afile.mp4"
    context = {} #variables I'm passing to my html template
    response = render_to_response(template, context, context_instance=RequestContext(request))
    domain,cookies = generate_signed_cookies(s3resource,expire_minutes=expireLen)
    #TROUBLESHOOTING COOKIES:
    #NOTE - Cookie Domain must be a domain you control that spans your app & your Cloudfront CNAME
    #NOTE - (e.g. if my webapp is www.mydomain.com and my AWS Download Distribution has cname cloud.mydomain.com, cant set cookies from webapp to 
            # www.mydomain.com or localhost.mydomain.com or cloud.mydomain.com and have them work 
        # -> instead set cookies to .mydomain.com to work across sub-domains, you can then verify in request headers to CloudFront that these cookies get passed.
        # TIP - if you set_cookies from a page with a .mydomain.com suffix, but don't see them get set in Chrome they didn't get set because of permissions - can't set to a diff subdomain or diff base domain
        # TIP - if you set_cookies and see them in Chrome but don't see them in request headers to Cloudfront, cookie domain is likely too narrow, need to widen to span subdomains
    base_domain = '.mydomain.com'
    # NOTE: Sanity check when testing so you can flag any gotchas - I have not fully tested using non-cname urls inside policy vs all possible domains for cookie itself   
    if not domain.endswith(base_domain):
        logger.warn("This likely won't work - your resource permissions use a different domain than your cookies")
    for name,value in cookies.items():
        response.set_cookie(name,value=value,httponly=True,domain=base_domain)
    return response

############################################

if __name__ == '__main__':
    domain,cookies = generate_signed_cookies('images/*',expire_minutes=30)

Notes about my setup:

  • I had to make only one change to my download distribution that was already set up & working for signed URLs: I had to add a cname with a base domain matching my website.
  • I used the Chrome Web Developer tools:

    • Network: to view request headers sent in cloudfront call and see 403 vs 200/status/response size
    • Console: to see 403 errors until I got everything working
    • Resources > Cookies - verify that [localhost or your host].mydomain.com cookies show the 3 Cloudfront cookies populated, that they are set to Domain=.mydomain.com and that these values match the values in the request headers to Cloudfront (if missing, likely domain is misconfigured)

My AWS configuration

  • S3 requires Cloudfront origin
  • Cloudfront download distribution:
    • Distribution Settings:
      • cname defined: cloud.mydomain.com (NEW FOR ME!)
      • Default Cloudfront certificate
    • Origins tab: 1 origin defined that maps to my S3 bucket
    • Behaviors tab - Default:
      • All of these are unchanged from the settings I already used with signed URLs
      • HTTP and HTTPS
      • GET,HEAD
      • Forward Headers: None
      • Use Origin Cache Headers
      • Minimum TTL: 0
      • Forward Cookies: None
      • Forward QueryStrings: No
      • Smooth Streaming: No
      • Restrict Viewer Access: YES (NO CHANGE since signed urls)
      • Trusted Signers: Self

Trickiest parts once you have the cookie-generating code above:

  • making sure the cookie domain is right
  • making sure the path/resource in your policy matches the request being made from your app
like image 101
randalv Avatar answered Oct 21 '22 03:10

randalv