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We're developing a system using AngularJS and PHP. I have some concerns about the security on the matter of authentication. I wrote a basic authentication based upon multiple different examples around the web (I only started learning Angular), which uses a database via REST API calls. On some routes it checks if the user information exists before it creates a promise, but I have a few questions:

  • Can session information be stored in$window.sessionStorage or $cookieStorage without the client being able to modify these values or should I keep them server-side with PHP $_SESSION and fetch them from there, never storing them anywhere in JS? Session information can contain uid, role, email and name

  • Can I store a value, like let's say $rootScope.role or $scope.role without the client being able to modify this value? Let's say for example we have multiple levels of user accounts where super-admin is the highest. If I create a route with a resolve which would check the $rootScope.rolelevel, can a novice go change the $rootScope.role value to super-admin gaining access to restricted backend sections?

  • Will I have to implement a GET /session check on every route to which gets $_SESSION data to actually make sure this data stays untouched?

  • Or am I just paranoid?

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You're not paranoid, any client-side authentication should be questioned. When it comes to security, you can't assume that the client is forbidden or unable to do anything on their own device.

Security related functions must stay on the backend, an environment you set up and control.

can a novice go change the $rootScope.role value to super-admin gaining access to restricted backend sections?

Asking questions like "can a novice..." are futile in my opinion. Do you only want security against novice malicious users? If your "restricted backend sections" can be accessed by modifying the frontend, you're doing something wrong.

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Thank you for your answer but you misunderstood me when i talked about novices. I wasnt referring to a users skill level but a user account level. I will accept your answer and adjust my code accordingly.
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Great question! Front end security requires the cooperation of the browser and your server.

Javascript is an untrusted environment, so you can’t reliably enforce any authorization there (i.e. you can’t use properties on $scope to prevent a user from doing something). Your server needs to enforce these rules by ensuring that every API request is properly authenticated and authorized.

API requests are typically authenticated with a cookie. The cookie typically contains a session identifier, which points to a row in your database which contains the authorization information (i.e. what the user is allowed to access). The user can get this cookie by logging in (presenting hard credentials like a username and password).

The cookie may also contain a signed access token, such as a JWT. Depending on your architecture you can remove the session database and rely purely on the signed token for authentication.

In either case you want to set the HttpOnly flag on the cookie when your server is sending the cookie to the browser. This will prevent the JavaScript environment from reading the cookie, this is a good security measure to yourself against XSS attacks.

You also need to protect yourself against CSRF attacks. This is a situation where another website can trigger a GET or POST request to your API, and this will send along the authentication cookies. You can guard against this by creating another cookie that does NOT have the HttpOnly flag, and storing a random value in it. The JS environment must attach this value to any request, typically as a custom HTTP header. Your server then asserts that the value is associated with the session or token.

I’ve tried to cover all the bases in this answer. If you’d like to read more, you can check out these blog posts that I’ve written, they discuss token authentication, but each has sections that cover front-end security issues:

Token Based Authentication for Single Page Apps (SPAs)

https://stormpath.com/blog/build-secure-user-interfaces-using-jwts/

Disclaimer: I work at Stormpath and we provide a secure, hosted user management solution for any application, including Angular! See https://docs.stormpath.com to learn more and find the SDK for your server.

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A JWT approach for this system might be a little bit too much because all our data is in relation with the user's id, but we might be implementing this for the practice and future use. Token based authentication does have other benefits to basic sessions or cookies on PHP hide, so it's worth considering. We'll be forgetting about JavaScript storing on this note though. Thanks!

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