How do HttpOnly cookies work with AJAX requests?

Question

JavaScript needs access to cookies if AJAX is used on a site with access restrictions based on cookies. Will HttpOnly cookies work on an AJAX site?

Edit: Microsoft created a way to prevent XSS attacks by disallowing JavaScript access to cookies if HttpOnly is specified. FireFox later adopted this. So my question is: If you are using AJAX on a site, like StackOverflow, are Http-Only cookies an option?

Edit 2: Question 2. If the purpose of HttpOnly is to prevent JavaScript access to cookies, and you can still retrieve the cookies via JavaScript through the XmlHttpRequest Object, what is the point of HttpOnly?

Edit 3: Here is a quote from Wikipedia:

When the browser receives such a cookie, it is supposed to use it as usual in the following HTTP exchanges, but not to make it visible to client-side scripts.[32] The HttpOnly flag is not part of any standard, and is not implemented in all browsers. Note that there is currently no prevention of reading or writing the session cookie via a XMLHTTPRequest. [33].

I understand that document.cookie is blocked when you use HttpOnly. But it seems that you can still read cookie values in the XMLHttpRequest object, allowing for XSS. How does HttpOnly make you any safer than? By making cookies essentially read only?

In your example, I cannot write to your document.cookie, but I can still steal your cookie and post it to my domain using the XMLHttpRequest object.

<script type="text/javascript">
    var req = null;
    try { req = new XMLHttpRequest(); } catch(e) {}
    if (!req) try { req = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP"); } catch(e) {}
    if (!req) try { req = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } catch(e) {}
    req.open('GET', 'http://stackoverflow.com/', false);
    req.send(null);
    alert(req.getAllResponseHeaders());
</script>

Edit 4: Sorry, I meant that you could send the XMLHttpRequest to the StackOverflow domain, and then save the result of getAllResponseHeaders() to a string, regex out the cookie, and then post that to an external domain. It appears that Wikipedia and ha.ckers concur with me on this one, but I would love be re-educated...

Final Edit: Ahh, apparently both sites are wrong, this is actually a bug in FireFox. IE6 & 7 are actually the only browsers that currently fully support HttpOnly.

To reiterate everything I've learned:

• HttpOnly restricts all access to document.cookie in IE7 & and FireFox (not sure about other browsers)
• HttpOnly removes cookie information from the response headers in XMLHttpObject.getAllResponseHeaders() in IE7.
• XMLHttpObjects may only be submitted to the domain they originated from, so there is no cross-domain posting of the cookies.

edit: This information is likely no longer up to date.

Answer 1

Yes, cookies are very useful for Ajax.

Putting the authentication in the request URL is bad practice. There was a news item last week about getting the authentication tokens in the URL's from the google cache.

No, there is no way to prevent attacks. Older browsers still allow trivial access to cookies via javascript. You can bypass http only, etc. Whatever you come up with can be gotten around given enough effort. The trick is to make it too much effort to be worthwhile.

If you want to make your site more secure (there is no perfect security) you could use an authentication cookie that expires. Then, if the cookie is stolen, the attacker must use it before it expires. If they don't then you have a good indication there's suspicious activity on that account. The shorter the time window the better for security but the more load it puts on your server generating and maintaining keys.

Answer 2

Not necessarily, it depends what you want to do. Could you elaborate a bit? AJAX doesn't need access to cookies to work, it can make requests on its own to extract information, the page request that the AJAX call makes could access the cookie data & pass that back to the calling script without Javascript having to directly access the cookies

Answer 3

Therefore I am assuming JavaScript needs access to your cookies.

All HTTP requests from your browser transmit your cookie information for the site in question. JavaScript can both set and read cookies. Cookies are not by definition required for Ajax applications, but they are required for most web applications to maintain user state.

The formal answer to your question as phrased - "Does JavaScript need access to cookies if AJAX is used?" - is therefore "no". Think of enhanced search fields that use Ajax requests to provide auto-suggest options, for example. There is no need of cookie information in that case.

Answer 4

No, the page that the AJAX call requests has access to cookies too & that's what checks whether you're logged in.

You can do other authentication with the Javascript, but I wouldn't trust it, I always prefer putting any sort of authentication checking in the back-end.

Answer 5

There's a bit more to this.

Ajax doesn't strictly require cookies, but they can be useful as other posters have mentioned. Marking a cookie HTTPOnly to hide it from scripts only partially works, because not all browsers support it, but also because there are common workarounds.

It's odd that the XMLHTTPresponse headers are giving the cookie, technically the server doesn't have to return the cookie with the response. Once it's set on the client, it stays set until it expires. Though there are schemes in which the cookie is changed with every request to prevent re-use. So you may be able to avoid that workaround by changing the server to not provide the cookie on the XMLHTTP responses.

In general though, I think HTTPOnly should be used with some caution. There are cross site scripting attacks where an attacker arranges for a user to submit an ajax-like request originating from another site, using simple post forms, without the use of XMLHTTP, and your browser's still-active cookie would authenticate the request.

If you want to be sure that an AJAX request is authenticated, the request itself AND the HTTP headers need to contain the cookie. Eg through the use of scripts or unique hidden inputs. HTTPOnly would hinder that.

Usually the interesting reason to want HTTPOnly is to prevent third-party content included on your webpage from stealing cookies. But there are many interesting reasons to be very cautious about including third-party content, and filter it aggressively.

Answer 6

Cookies are automatically handled by the browser when you make an AJAX call, so there's no need for your Javascript to mess around with cookies.