HTTP State Management Mechanism

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].¶

Requirements phrased in the imperative as part of algorithms (such as "strip any leading space characters" or "return false and abort these steps") are to be interpreted with the meaning of the key word ("MUST", "SHOULD", "MAY", etc) used in introducing the algorithm.¶

Conformance requirements phrased as algorithms or specific steps can be implemented in any manner, so long as the end result is equivalent. In particular, the algorithms defined in this specification are intended to be easy to understand and are not intended to be performant.¶

This specification uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) notation of [RFC5234].¶

The following core rules are included by reference, as defined in [RFC5234], Appendix B.1: ALPHA (letters), CR (carriage return), CRLF (CR LF), CTL (controls), DIGIT (decimal 0-9), DQUOTE (double quote), HEXDIG (hexadecimal 0-9/A-F/a-f), LF (line feed), OCTET (any 8-bit sequence of data), SP (space), HTAB (horizontal tab), CHAR (any US-ASCII character), VCHAR (any visible US-ASCII character), and WSP (whitespace).¶

The OWS (optional whitespace) rule is used where zero or more linear whitespace characters MAY appear: ¶

            
OWS            = *( [ obs-fold ] WSP )
                 ; "optional" whitespace
obs-fold       = CRLF
            
          

OWS SHOULD either not be produced or be produced as a single SP character. Multiple OWS characters that occur within field-content SHOULD be replaced with a single SP before interpreting the field value or forwarding the message downstream.

The terms user agent, client, server, proxy, and origin server have the same meaning as in the HTTP/1.1 specification ([RFC2616]).¶

The terms request-host and request-uri refer to the values the user agent would send to the server as, respectively, the host (but not port) and the absoluteURI (http_URL) of the HTTP Request-Line.¶

Using the Set-Cookie header, a server can send the user agent a short string in an HTTP response that the user agent will return in future HTTP requests. For example, the server can send the user agent a "session identifier" named SID with the value 31d4d96e407aad42. The user agent then returns the session identifier in subsequent requests.¶

The server can alter the default scope of the cookie using the Path and Domain attributes. For example, the server can instruct the user agent to return the cookie to every path and every subdomain of example.com.¶

The server can store multiple cookies at the user agent. For example, the server can store a session identifier as well as the user's preferred language by returning two Set-Cookie header fields. Notice that the server uses the Secure and HttpOnly attributes to provide additional security protections for the more-sensitive session identifier.¶

If the server wishes the user agent to persist the cookie over multiple sessions, the server can specify a expiration date in the Expires attribute. Note that the user agent might delete the cookie before the expiration date if the user agent's cookie store exceeds its quota or if the user manually deletes the server's cookie.¶

Finally, to remove a cookie, the server returns a Set-Cookie header with an expiration date in the past. The server will be successful in removing the cookie only if the Path and the Domain attribute in the Set-Cookie header match the values used when the cookie was created.¶

The Set-Cookie header is used to send cookies from the server to the user agent.¶

This section defines a number of algorithms used by user agents to process the Cookie and Set-Cookie headers.¶

When a user agent receives a Set-Cookie header in an HTTP response, the user agent receives a set-cookie-string consisting of the value of the header.¶

A user agent MUST use an algorithm equivalent to the following algorithm to parse set-cookie-strings: ¶

1. If the set-cookie-string contains a U+003B (";") character:
   • The name-value-pair string consists of the characters up to, but not including, the first U+003B (";"), and the unparsed-attributes consist of the remainder of the set-cookie-string (including the U+003B (";") in question).
   Otherwise:
   • The name-value-pair string consists of all the characters contained in the set-cookie-string, and the unparsed-attributes is the empty string.
2. If the name-value-pair string lacks a U+003D ("=") character, ignore the set-cookie-string entirely.
3. The (possibly empty) name string consists of the characters up to, but not including, the first U+003D ("=") character, and the (possibly empty) value string consists of the characters after the first U+003D ("=") character.
4. Remove any leading or trailing WSP characters from the name string and the value string.
5. If the name string is empty, ignore the set-cookie-string entirely.
6. The cookie-name is the name string, and the cookie-value is the value string.

The user agent MUST use an algorithm equivalent to the following algorithm to parse the unparsed-attributes: ¶

1. If the unparsed-attributes string is empty, skip the rest of these steps.
2. Discard the first character of the unparsed-attributes (which will be a U+003B (";") character).
3. If the remaining unparsed-attributes contains a U+003B (";") character:
   • Consume the characters of the unparsed-attributes up to, but not including, the first U+003B (";") character.
   Otherwise:
   • Consume the remainder of the unparsed-attributes.
   Let the cookie-av string be the characters consumed in this step.
4. If the cookie-av string contains a U+003D ("=") character:
   • The (possibly empty) attribute-name string consists of the characters up to, but not including, the first U+003D ("=") character, and the (possibly empty) attribute-value string consists of the characters after the first U+003D ("=") character.
   Otherwise:
   • The attribute-name string consists of the entire cookie-av string, and the attribute-value string is empty.
5. Remove any leading or trailing WSP characters from the attribute-name string and the attribute-value string.
6. Process the attribute-name and attribute-value according to the requirements in the following subsections. (Notice that attributes with unrecognizeed attribute-names are ignored.)
7. Return to Step 1.

When the user agent finishes parsing the set-cookie-string, the user agent receives a cookie from the request-uri with name cookie-name, value cookie-value, and attributes cookie-attribute-list.¶

The user agent stores the following fields about each cookie: name, value, expiry-time, domain, path, creation-time, last-access-time, persistent-flag, host-only-flag, secure-only-flag, and http-only-flag.¶

When the user agent receives a cookie from a request-uri with name cookie-name, value cookie-value, and attributes cookie-attribute-list, the user agent MUST process the cookie as follows: ¶

1. A user agent MAY ignore a received cookie in its entirety. For example, the user agent might wish to block receiving cookies from "third-party" responses or the user agent might not wish to store cookie that exceed some size.
2. Create a new cookie with name cookie-name, value cookie-value. Set the creation-time and the last-access-time to the current date and time.
3. If the cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute with an attribute-name of "Max-Age":
   • Set the cookie's persistent-flag to true.
   • Set the cookie's expiry-time to attribute-value of the last attribute in the cookie-attribute-list with an attribute-name of "Max-Age".
   Otherwise, if the cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute with an attribute-name of "Expires" (and does not contain an attribute with an attribute-name of "Max-Age"):
   • Set the cookie's persistent-flag to true.
   • Set the cookie's expiry-time to attribute-value of the last attribute in the cookie-attribute-list with an attribute-name of "Expires".
   Otherwise:
   • Set the cookie's persistent-flag to false.
   • Set the cookie's expiry-time to the latest representable date.
4. If the cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute with an attribute-name of "Domain":
   • Let the domain-attribute be the attribute-value of the last attribute in the cookie-attribute-list with an attribute-name of "Domain".
   Otherwise:
   • Let the domain-attribute be the empty string.
5. If the user agent is configured to reject "public suffixes" and the domain-attribute is a public suffix:
   • If the domain-attribute is identical to the canonicalized request-host:
     • Let the domain-attribute be the empty string.
     Otherwise:
     • Ignore the cookie entirely and abort these steps
   • NOTE: A "public suffix" is a domain that is controlled by a public registry, such as "com", "co.uk", and "pvt.k12.wy.us". This step is essential for preventing attacker.com from disrupting the integrity of example.com by setting a cookie with a Domain attribute of "com". Unfortunately, the set of public suffixes (also known as "registry controlled domains") changes over time. If feasible, user agents SHOULD use an up-to-date public suffix list, such as the one maintained by the Mozilla project at http://publicsuffix.org/.
6. If the domain-attribute is non-empty:
   • If the cannonicalized request-host does not domain-match the domain-attribute, ignore the cookie entirely and abort these steps.
   • Set the cookie's host-only-flag to false.
   • Set the cookie's domain to the domain-attribute.
   Otherwise:
   • Set the cookie's host-only-flag to true.
   • Set the cookie's domain to the canonicalized request-host.
7. If the cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute with an attribute-name of "Path", set the cookie's path to attribute-value of the last attribute in the cookie-attribute-list with an attribute-name of "Path". Otherwise, set cookie's path to the default-path of the request-uri.
8. If the cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute with an attribute-name of "Secure", set the cookie's secure-only-flag to true. Otherwise, set cookie's secure-only-flag to false.
9. If the cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute with an attribute-name of "HttpOnly", set the cookie's http-only-flag to true. Otherwise, set cookie's http-only-flag to false.
10. If the cookie was received from a non-HTTP API and the cookie's http-only-flag is set, abort these steps and ignore the cookie entirely.
11. If the cookie store contains a cookie with the same name, domain, and path as the newly created cookie:
    1. Let old-cookie be the existing cookie with the same name, domain, and path as the newly created cookie. (Notice that this algorithm maintains the invariant that there is at most one such cookie.)
    2. If the newly created cookie was received from an non-HTTP API and the old-cookie's http-only-flag is set, abort these steps and ignore the newly created cookie entirely.
    3. Update the creation-time of the newly created cookie to match the creation-time of the old-cookie.
    4. Remove the old-cookie from the cookie store.
12. Insert the newly created cookie into the cookie store.

A cookie is "expired" if the cookie has an expiry date in the past.¶

The user agent MUST evict all expired cookies from the cookie store if, at any time, an expired cookie exists in the cookie store.¶

At any time, the user agent MAY "remove excess cookies" from the cookie store if the number of cookies sharing a domain field exceeds some predetermined upper bound (such as 50 cookies).¶

At any time, the user agent MAY "remove excess cookies" form the cookie store if the cookie store exceeds some predetermined upper bound (such as 3000 cookies).¶

When the user agent removes excess cookies from the cookie store, the user agent MUST evict cookies in the following priority order: ¶

1. Expired cookies.
2. Cookies that share a domain field with more than a predetermined number of other cookies.
3. All cookies.

If two cookies have the same removal priority, the user agent MUST evict the cookie with the least recent last-access date first.¶

When "the current session is over" (as defined by the user agent), the user agent MUST remove from the cookie store all cookies with the persistent-flag set to false.¶

When the user agent generates an HTTP request, the user agent SHOULD attach exactly one HTTP header named Cookie if the cookie-string (defined below) for the request-uri is non-empty.¶

A user agent MAY omit the Cookie header in its entirety. For example, the user agent might wish to block sending cookies during "third-party" requests.¶

The user agent MUST use an algorithm equivalent to the following algorithm to compute the cookie-string from a cookie store and a request-uri: ¶

1. Let cookie-list be the set of cookies from the cookie store that meet all of the following requirements:
   • Either:
     • The cookie's host-only-flag is true and the canonicalized request-host is identical to the cookie's domain.
     Or:
     • The cookie's host-only-flag is false and the canonicalized request-host domain-matches cookie's domain.
   • The request-uri's path path-matches cookie's path.
   • If the cookie's secure-only-flag is true, then the request-uri's scheme must denote a "secure" protocol (as defined by the user agent).
     • NOTE: The notion of a "secure" protocol is not defined by this document. Typically, user agents consider a protocol secure if the protocol makes use of transport-layer security, such as TLS. For example, most user agents consider "https" to be a scheme that denotes a secure protocol.
   • If the cookie's http-only-flag is true, then exclude the cookie unless the cookie-string is being generated for an "HTTP" API (as defined by the user agent).
2. The user agent SHOULD sort the cookie-list in the following order:
   • Cookies with longer paths are listed before cookies with shorter paths.
   • Among cookies that have equal length path fields, cookies with earlier creation-times are listed before cookies with later creation-times.
   NOTE: Not all user agents sort the cookie-list in this order, but this order reflects common practice when this document was written, and, historically, there have been servers that (erroneously) depended on this order.
3. Update the last-access-time of each cookie in the cookie-list to the current date and time.
4. Serialize the cookie-list into a cookie-string by processing each cookie in the cookie-list in order:
   1. Output the cookie's name, the U+003D ("=") character, and the cookie's value.
   2. If there is an unprocessed cookie in the cookie-list, output the characters U+003B and U+0020 ("; ").

NOTE: Despite its name, the cookie-string is actually a sequence of octets, not a sequence of characters. To convert the cookie-string (or components thereof) into a sequence of characters (e.g., for presentation to the user), the user agent SHOULD use the UTF-8 character encoding [RFC3629].

Practical user agent implementations have limits on the number and size of cookies that they can store. General-use user agents SHOULD provide each of the following minimum capabilities: ¶

• At least 4096 bytes per cookie (as measured by the sum of the length of the cookie's name, value, and attributes).
• At least 50 cookies per domain.
• At least 3000 cookies total.

Servers SHOULD use as few and as small cookies as possible to avoid reaching these implementation limits and to minimize network bandwidth due to the Cookie header being included in every request.¶

Servers SHOULD gracefully degrade if the user agent fails to return one or more cookies in the Cookie header because the user agent might evict any cookie at any time on orders from the user.¶

One reason the Cookie and Set-Cookie headers uses such esoteric syntax is because many platforms (both in servers and user agents) provide a string-based application programmer interface (API) to cookies, requiring application-layer programmers to generate and parse the syntax used by the Cookie and Set-Cookie headers, which many programmers have done incorrectly, resulting in interoperability problems.¶

Instead of providing string-based APIs to cookies, platforms would be well-served by providing more semantic APIs. It is beyond the scope of this document to recommend specific API designs, but there are clear benefits to accepting a abstract "Date" object instead of a serialized date string.¶

Particularly worrisome are so-called "third-party" cookies. In rendering an HTML document, a user agent often requests resources from other servers (such as advertising networks). These third-party servers can use cookies to track the user even if the user never visits the server directly.¶

Some user agents restrict how third-party cookies behave. For example, some user agents refuse to send the Cookie header in third-party requests. Other user agents refuse to process the Set-Cookie header in responses to third-party requests. User agents vary widely in their third-party cookie policies. This document grants user agents wide latitude to experiment with third-party cookie policies that balance the privacy and compatibility needs of their users. However, this document does not endorse any particular third-party cookie policy.¶

Third-party cookie blocking policies are often ineffective at achieving their privacy goals if servers attempt to work around their restrictions to track users. In particular, two collaborating servers can often track users without using cookies at all.¶

User agents SHOULD provide users with a mechanism for managing the cookies stored in the cookie store. For example, a user agent might let users delete all cookies received during a specified time period or all the cookies related to a particular domain. In addition, many user agent include a user interface element that lets users examine the cookies stored in their cookie store.¶

User agents SHOULD provide users with a mechanism for disabling cookies. When cookies are disabled, the user agent MUST NOT include a Cookie header in outbound HTTP requests and the user agent MUST NOT process Set-Cookie headers in inbound HTTP responses.¶

Some user agents provide users the option of preventing persistent storage of cookies across sessions. When configured thusly, user agents MUST treat all received cookies as if the persistent-flag were set to false.¶

Some user agents provide users with the ability to approve individual writes to the cookie store. In many common usage scenarios, these controls generate a large number of prompts. However, some privacy-conscious users find these controls useful nonetheless.¶

Cookies have a number of security pitfalls. This section overviews a few of the more salient issues.¶

In particular, cookies encourage developers to rely on ambient authority for authentication, often becoming vulnerable to attacks such as cross-site request forgery. Also, when storing session identifiers in cookies, developers often create session fixation vulnerabilities.¶

Transport-layer encryption, such as that employed in HTTPS, is insufficient to prevent a network attacker from obtaining or altering a victim's cookies because the cookie protocol itself has various vulnerabilities (see "Weak Confidentiality" and "Weak Integrity", below). In addition, by default, cookies do not provide confidentiality or integrity from network attackers, even when used in conjunction with HTTPS.¶

A server that uses cookies to authenticate users can suffer security vulnerabilities because some user agents let remote parties issue HTTP requests from the user agent (e.g., via HTTP redirects or HTML forms). When issuing those requests, user agents attach cookies even if the remote party does not know the contents of the cookies, potentially letting the remote party exercise authority at an unwary server.¶

Although this security concern goes by a number of names (e.g., cross-site request forgery, confused deputy), the issue stems from cookies being a form of ambient authority. Cookies encourage server operators to separate designation (in the form of URLs) from authorization (in the form of cookies). Consequently, the user agent might supply the authorization for a resource designated by the attacker, possibly causing the server or its clients to undertake actions designated by the attacker as though they were authorized by the user.¶

Instead of using cookies for authorization, server operators might wish to consider entangling designation and authorization by treating URLs as capabilities. Instead of storing secrets in cookies, this approach stores secrets in URLs, requiring the remote entity to supply the secret itself. Although this approach is not a panacea, judicious use of these principles can lead to more robust security.¶

Unless sent over a secure channel (such as TLS), the information in the Cookie and Set-Cookie headers is transmitted in the clear. ¶

1. All sensitive information conveyed in these headers is exposed to an eavesdropper.
2. A malicious intermediary could alter the headers as they travel in either direction, with unpredictable results.
3. A malicious client could alter the Cookie header before transmission, with unpredictable results.

Servers SHOULD encrypt and sign the contents of cookies when transmitting them to the user agent (even when sending the cookies over a secure channel). However, encrypting and signing cookie contents does not prevent an attacker from transplanting a cookie from one user agent to another or from replaying the cookie at a later time.¶

In addition to encrypting and signing the contents of every cookie, servers that require a higher level of security SHOULD use the Cookie and Set-Cookie headers only over a secure channel. When using cookies over a secure channel, servers SHOULD set the Secure attribute for every cookie. If a server does not set the Secure attribute, the protection provided by the secure channel will be largely moot.¶

Instead of storing session information directly in a cookie (where it might be exposed to or replayed by an attacker), servers commonly store a nonce (or "session identifier") in a cookie. When the server receives an HTTP request with a nonce, the server can look up state information associated with the cookie using the nonce as a key.¶

Using session identifier cookies limits the damage an attacker can cause if the attacker learns the contents of a cookie because the nonce is useful only for interacting with the server (unlike non-nonce cookie content, which might itself be sensitive). Furthermore, using a single nonce prevents an attacker from "splicing" together cookie content from two interactions with the server, which could cause the server to behave unexpectedly.¶

Using session identifiers is not without risk. For example, the server SHOULD take care to avoid "session fixation" vulnerabilities. A session fixation attack proceeds in three steps. First, the attacker transplants a session identifier from his or her user agent to the victim's user agent. Second, the victim uses that session identifier to interact with the server, possibly imbuing the session identifier with the user's credentials or confidential information. Third, the attacker uses the session identifier to interact with server directly, possibly obtaining the user's authority or confidential information.¶

Cookies do not provide isolation by port. If a cookie is readable by a service running on one port, the cookie is also readable by a service running on another port of the same server. If a cookie is writable by a service on one port, the cookie is also writable by a service running on another port of the same server. For this reason, servers SHOULD NOT both run mutually distrusting services on different ports of the same host and use cookies to store security-sensitive information.¶

Cookies do not provide isolation by scheme. Although most commonly used with the http and https schemes, the cookies for a given host might also be available to other schemes, such as ftp and gopher. Although this lack of isolation by scheme is most apparent in via non-HTTP APIs that permit access to cookies (e.g., HTML's document.cookie API), the lack of isolation by scheme is actually present in requirements for processing cookies themselves (e.g., consider retrieving a URI with the gopher scheme via HTTP).¶

Cookies do not always provide isolation by path. Although the network-level protocol does not send cookies stored for one path to another, some user agents expose cookies via non-HTTP APIs, such as HTML's document.cookie API. Because some of these user agents (e.g., web browsers) do not isolate resources received from different paths, a resource retrieved from one path might be able to access cookies stored for another path.¶

Cookies do not provide integrity guarantees for sibling domains (and their subdomains). For example, consider foo.example.com and bar.example.com. The foo.example.com server can set a cookie with a Domain attribute of "example.com" (possibly overwriting an existing "example.com" cookie set by bar.example.com), and the user agent will include that cookie in HTTP requests to bar.example.com. In the worst case, bar.example.com will be unable to distinguish this cookie from a cookie it set itself. The foo.example.com server might be able to leverage this ability to mount an attack against bar.example.com.¶

Even though the Set-Cookie header supports the Path attribute, the Path attribute does not provide any integrity protection because the user agent will accept an arbitrary Path attribute in a Set-Cookie header. For example, an HTTP response to a request for http://example.com/foo/bar can set a cookie with a Path attribute of "/qux". Consequently, servers SHOULD NOT both run mutually distrusting services on different paths of the same host and use cookies store security-sensitive information.¶

An active network attacker can also inject cookies into the Cookie header sent to https://example.com/ by impersonating a response from http://example.com/ and injecting a Set-Cookie header. The HTTPS server at example.com will be unable to distinguish these cookies from cookies that it set itself in an HTTPS response. An active network attacker might be able to leverage this ability to mount an attack against example.com even if example.com uses HTTPS exclusively.¶

Servers can partially mitigate these attacks by encrypting and signing the contents of their cookies. However, using cryptography does not mitigate the issue completely because an attacker can replay a cookie he or she received from the authentic example.com server in the user's session, with unpredictable results.¶

Finally, an attacker might be able to force the user agent to delete cookies by storing a large number of cookies. Once the user agent reaches its storage limit, the user agent will be forced to evict some cookies. Servers SHOULD NOT rely upon user agents retaining cookies.¶

Cookies rely upon the Domain Name System (DNS) for security. If the DNS is partially or fully compromised, the cookie protocol might fail to provide the security properties required by applications.¶