Fix it in your stack

Tested fixes for CWE-614 in Express, Flask, Spring Boot, ASP.NET Core, Rails and Laravel: the vulnerable code, the fix, a plausible fix that still fails, and the regression tests.

Definition

MITRE’s description of CWE-614: The Secure attribute for sensitive cookies in HTTPS sessions is not set.

Common consequences MITRE lists

  • Confidentiality: Read Application Data

Why it matters

A single plain-HTTP request, such as a mistyped link or a network attacker’s redirect, exposes the cookie to anyone on the network path.

How to prevent it

  • Set Secure on every sensitive cookie, and serve the whole site over HTTPS with HSTS.
  • Use the __Host- or __Secure- cookie prefixes so that browsers enforce Secure.
  • Check responses for cookies without the attribute in automated tests.

Guides on this site

Also covers this · Guide

Session management: cookies, timeouts, rotation and revocation

Model authentication as transitions in server authority, set session cookies and timeouts to current NIST and OWASP values, and verify fixation prevention, expiry, reauthentication, revocation and stolen-cookie defenses.

Also covers this · Guide

Configure HTTP security headers from a tested baseline

Send the response headers that make browsers enforce HTTPS, run only your own scripts, refuse hostile framing and keep cookies on one host, then prove they appear on every kind of response.

Practice

References

  1. CWE-614 in the MITRE CWE list (version 4.20)

List data from MITRE; the name, definition and consequences are from MITRE’s CWE 4.20 catalogue. A guide is listed as the main subject when the weakness is what the guide is about, and as covering it when a dedicated section or worked example addresses it.

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