|  | Posted by John on 06/30/06 11:34 
Simon Dean wrote:> John wrote:
 >
 >> Simon Dean wrote:
 >>
 >>> And while Im at it... should I be using PHP's built in sessions, or
 >>>  use my own functions that I've chobbled together from various
 >>> sources and takes advantage of also validating IP Addresses???
 >>
 >>
 >>
 >>> I don't like to use things just because they're there.
 >>
 >>
 >>
 >> I know what you mean, but if it's there and it's working well, then
 >> use it.
 >>
 >> PHP sessions do work very well - except for one problem I found.
 >>
 >> MS IE kept using a different session ID for every page it requested !
 >>
 >>
 >> I solved this by creating my own session ID and storing it in a
 >> cookie, so I could get it back and force the same session ID each
 >> time.
 >
 >
 > Hrm... apart from setting a cookie and hoping (since you can't rely on
 > PHP sessions), what you do isn't too different from what I do... I just
 > pass a session id either in a cookie, or on the url, and verify it's
 > still active with the right ip address...
 >
 > which brings me I think onto my next question... another poster said
 > tcpip addresses are unreliable in some circumstances, so what else can
 > you use to verify that someone else hasn't stolen someone elses
 > sessionid and is using that account?
 
 A good question - I'm may be getting out of my depth here, but this is
 what I understand:
 
 1) if you used PHP sessions (and their own ID's) natively, it would take
 care of all that for you, but then you may run into the MS IE problem.
 
 2) as I set my own session ID, I rely on generating a unique ID through
 mt_rand() and a time() combination. I must admit, I do no more checking
 on it, so it could happen that 2 people get the same ID - I'm just
 relying on it being a very small probability...
 
 I'm going to look into using the original PHP generated session ID, but
 keep it in my own cookie !
 
 
 Are you looking for a VERY secure method for doing something ? If so,
 maybe you should be looking at something else, a secure server page ?
 HTTPS ?
 
 John.
  Navigation: [Reply to this message] |