We have a content management solution based on php. We have restricted multiple logins using sessions management. We would however want to introduce machine based logins.
How can this be done?
Thanks in advance.
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
You need to determine the IP address of the machines you want to restrict access to, and then use an if statement on the log in, for example
if ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']==
{
then do log in code
}
a fast way to detemine your machine IP addresses is go to those machines and go to the website:
http://whatismyipa
IP Address is not reliable, but at the same time is the only method (outside of grabbing a TCP/IP packet and reading the MAC address) to identify a client. My bank uses a method such as this. They do it by dropping the IP into a cookie. If a user tries to login from a machine outside of their own (Same if IP changes from ISP) they are asked to re-identify themselves. This is done with my bank through a text message to my phone with a special code that I then enter into the website. You could do something similar to this for your situation.
Hello All,
Thanks for your responses till date.
I am looking forward to a more - hassle free - less administrative - machine identity based solution to identify my users through the web browser.
We cannot rely upon IP address... given the fact that IP is dynamically assigned. We were looking forward to restrict a login from one single machine only.
For this, we were contemplating a combination of solutions. For e.g... installing digital certificates on client machine + getting to know his machine's hardware part Info + Range of IP from where he's accessing ; coupled with his past logins = same customer and hence - login is permitted... kinda stuff.
How can I get to know any of his machine's info; let's say the harddisk, motherboard sr. no. etc. .from a web browser?
The solution you are proposing is not going to be one that is guaranteed then. If you allow a range of IP addresses, then technically a couple of machines could still logon. The digital certificate is a good idea and is used in many places to verify identity. This could be installed on multiple computers though.
Getting information about the user's computer is a bigger challenge since some users will come from Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac, or through multiple proxies. If any of these happen most likely any software (which most likely would be done with something other than PHP) you run will break. Possibly running a client side Java (not JavaScript) software, which can detect computer information would be a better solution than a PHP based system. Or maybe develop the security applet in Java and have that communicate with PHP in real-time.
Remember any time you are going for absolute security it is hard to restrict access to one machine. The bank that I have that does this sends a txt message to my phone when my IP address changes to verify me. If you run software on the client machine it is susceptible to hacking and spoofing. This holds true for IP verification, computer information validation, etc.
Hope this helps
For some web servers, PHP will see the client certificate in $_SERVER. You can give it a try. Other information about the client PC, such as CPUID, is intentionally not returned to the web server for security reasons.
If security is that much of a concern in your application, identifying the computer may not be good enough. Many users write their userids and passwords on post-it notes stuck to their monitor, or have a list of passwords in their top desk drawer. Anyone who can walk up to such a computer will defeat your security.
Have you considered fingerprint ID or other biometric systems? There are fingerprint systems that would allow you to store the login data in the fingerprint ID software.
A simpler solution would be to ask a personal question that only the user would know, i.e. the name of first pet, favorite high school teacher, etc.
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: geomouchetPosted on 2009-06-27 at 06:59:10ID: 24727727
You could create a php script to register a machine. It would use setcookie() to save a cookie. Then when that user returns you use $_COOKIES to retrieve the cookie data. This is how those "remember me" checkboxes work on various web sites. Note, though that if the user changes browsers or deletes his cookies he will have to re-register that machine.