Open Stack

@sdague, It is a well-accepted security statement that you should never
pass secrets in query parameters. Maybe how to fix it is opinion, but
not that there is a problem here.

You don't have to have a MitM or XSS to exploit this. Query parameters
are stored in browser history, so launching a session from a shared
computer also leads to exposure. Access to a web cache also equals
exposure. Etc.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1197459

Title:
  noVNC contains the session token in URL and insecurely sets the
  session cookie

Status in OpenStack Compute (nova):
  Opinion
Status in OpenStack Security Advisory:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  The VNC Console connection in Nova works by having the user connect to
  the API which returns a URL such as:
  https://example.com:443/?token=abc Where the token has a TTL which is
  then used to create a session from a WebSocket. However, URL's should
  not contain sensitive information such as session tokens with a TTL
  since URL's can be leaked through proxy logs or other types of attacks
  such as Cross-Site Scripting. Additionally, due to the session cookie
  being set with JavaScript it cannot securely be set to HttpOnly nor is
  it set with the Secure flag making it further susceptible to Cross-
  Site Scripting attacks or leakage through a non-SSL connection. To
  limit the exposure of the token being leaked through the URL the
  returned token from the API should be of a one-time use and only used
  as an authentication token in order to obtain a session. The session
  cookie should be set by a Web Service instead of the client in order
  to securely set the cookie with the HttpOnly flag to be set in
  addition to setting the Secure flag.

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