Question

Methods to prevent URL Tampering

Asked by: cracky

I am interested to find out how some of you protect your data from URL tampering, specifically ID guessing.

For example, let's say we have a set of clients who each have pages linked from a forwarding URL. Something like:

example.com/goto/8758

Obviously, the integer at the end is the identifier which redirects to the client's page. While this page is public and not exactly a secret, a particularly nosy user could just enter numbers at random or in a sequence to get a list of clients. The main concern is that having easily sequenced or guessed IDs makes it easy for a competitor to compile a list of your clients and target them for whatever purpose they choose.

To the question: How would you seek to prevent this?

I've thought about using a hash field like so:

example.com/goto/8758/js8rhlf9

Significantly reducing any blind attempts. Is this worth the data bloat? I'd like a solution that doesn't require very long strings, like UUID() or md5 of a date for example.

Points will be allocated to the best ideas worthy of production.

Thanks :)

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Asked On
2009-03-26 at 21:07:45ID24269998
Tags

url querystring php mysql

Topic

PHP and Databases

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: shobinsunPosted on 2009-03-27 at 02:07:52ID: 23999008

Hello,

You can use " mod_security " or " Anti Tamper Module "  for Apache .

The following link will help you:

http://www.wisec.it/projects.php?id=3

http://www.modsecurity.org/

Regards.

 

by: crackyPosted on 2009-03-27 at 03:01:59ID: 23999272

Thanks for your response shobinsun. Both are handy modules for automated attacks and SQL injections, but what I referred to in the question was specifically variable guessing in a non-automated fashion.

E.G: I type a sequence of numbers at the variable to see what I can come up with.

Please see the hash example above for a way I thought of to include random enough info to prevent guessing by clients. The modules you recommended do nothing to discourage legitimate requests. I want to prevent real-life users from playing with the URL to explore random results.

Does this make sense?

 

by: crackyPosted on 2009-03-27 at 03:05:15ID: 23999290

Just an addition: I'm specifically looking for real-life scenarios, hopefully deployed and tested in production environments. I am familiar with Google and its ability to provide me with search results.

I'd appreciate any feedback real developers could offer about methods they have employed themselves to prevent id guessing in URLs.

 

by: shobinsunPosted on 2009-03-27 at 03:21:55ID: 23999379

Hello,

hashing is a better way to do that.

And you should aware of the register_globels variable in the php.ini to set off for further security for php.

Regards.

 

by: crackyPosted on 2009-04-01 at 20:51:32ID: 24046228

I'm surprised nobody chimed in with anything I didn't already know or do. Oh well, easy points.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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