[whatwg] Dealing with UI redress vulnerabilities inherent to the current web

Jonas Sicking jonas at sicking.cc
Sat Oct 11 23:29:25 PDT 2008


Collin Jackson wrote:
> 6) New cookie attribute: The "httpOnly" cookie flag allows sites to
> put restrictions on how a cookie can be accessed. We could allow a new
> flag to be specified in the Set-Cookie header that is designed to
> prevent CSRF and "UI redress" attacks. If a cookie is set with a
> "sameOrigin" flag, we could prevent that cookie from being sent on
> HTTP requests that are initiated by other origins, or were made by
> frames with ancestors of other origins. In a CSRF or "UI redress"
> attack scenario, it will appear as though the user is not logged in,
> and thus the HTTP request will be unable to affect the user's account.
> 
> This flag could potentially use the cookie concept of same origin
> rather than the HTML5 concept of same origin: ignore port, ignore
> scheme unless "secure" flag is set, "domain" attribute can be used to
> relax domain comparison.

Wouldn't such cookies still be sent if you trick the user into first 
clicking a link inside the frame, thus making it a same-site navigation, 
and then getting the user to click on the 'transfer money' link or 
whatever you are trying to trick the user to do?

/ Jonas



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