Re: Generating unique session ids

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006, Lexington Luthor wrote:

> >Session id's for web cannot be predictable because this will create a
> >security hole in application.
>
> Using a sequence does not mean it will be predictable.
> In the past I have used something similar to this:
>
> SELECT md5('secret_salt' || nextval('my_seq')::text)

* When somebody knows md5('secret_salt' || '5') he will be able to
easily compute
md5('secret_salt' || '50')
md5('secret_salt' || '51')
md5('secret_salt' || '52')
...
md5('secret_salt' || '59')
md5('secret_salt' || '500')
md5('secret_salt' || '501')
...
md5('secret_salt' || '[any number starting from 5]').
Without knowledge of 'secret_salt'. So your proposal is totally
insecure.

* PostgreSQL integers (as returned by nextval()) are 4 bytes. This
means only 32 bit strength - much too low for today computers.

* Any database user is most of the time able to read function
bodies, so anybody who is able co connect to your database will be
able to get your 'secret_salt' and then predict session id's.

* If you think that nobody will connect to a database but
web-application frontend there's a high probability of SQL-injection
hole in frontend, which is sufficient.

So, basically, a very bad idea.

Regards
Tometzky
--
...although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a
moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you
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Winnie the Pooh