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Software Security
  • README
  • Prerequisites
    • Prerequisites
  • Introduction
    • Cyber security principles
    • Basic web concepts
      • HTTP
      • JavaScript
      • Cookies
      • SQL
      • DOM
      • APIs and the multitier architecture
    • Basic browser security concepts
      • Same-Origin Policy (SOP)
      • Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)
      • Cookies
      • Tracking
    • Basic security concepts
      • Hashing
  • Access Control: Basics
    • Authentication
      • Passwords
      • Password managers
      • Attacking passwords - online
      • Attacking passwords - offline
    • Authorization
      • Insecure direct object references
    • Session Management
    • CSRF
      • CSRF: why & how it works
      • Protecting against CSRF attacks
    • SSRF
      • SSRF: how it works and how we can protect against it
  • Access Control: Advanced
    • Authentication
      • Federation
      • Alternative authentication mechanisms
      • FIDO2 and WebAuthn
  • Injection attacks
    • Injection attacks
    • SQL Injection
    • Command Injection
    • Cross-site scripting
      • Input validation
      • Context sensitive output encoding
      • About the HttpOnly flag
      • Content Security Policy
    • Subresource integrity
    • Sandboxing
  • HTTPS
    • HTTPS
    • Introduction to cryptography
    • PKI
    • Setting up HTTPS
    • References
  • HTTP Headers for security
    • HTTP Headers
  • Threat Modeling
    • Threat modeling introduction
    • Threat modeling basics
    • Inspiration for threats
  • Bringing it all together
    • A comprehensive overview of controls
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  1. Introduction
  2. Basic web concepts

Cookies

PreviousJavaScriptNextSQL

Last updated 3 years ago

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Cookies

An HTTP cookie (web cookie, browser cookie) is a small piece of data that a server sends to the user's web browser. The browser may store it and send it back with the next request to the same server. Typically, it's used to tell if two requests came from the same browser — keeping a user logged-in, for example. It remembers stateful information for the stateless HTTP protocol.

Cookies are mainly used for three purposes:

  • Session management (Logins, shopping carts, game scores, or anything else the server should remember)

  • Personalization (User preferences, themes, and other settings)

  • Tracking (Recording and analyzing user behavior)

Cookies were once used for general client-side storage. While this was legitimate when they were the only way to store data on the client, it is recommended nowadays to consider alternatives such as local storage, session storage or indexedDB. Cookies are sent with every request, so they can worsen performance (especially for mobile data connections).

Source attribution

Some parts of this page are based on by Mozilla Contributors, which is licensed under .

Cookies
CC-BY-SA 2.5