Passing parameters in URL

[John Bokma]

"Diez B. Roggisch" <deets at nospam.web.de> writes:

> Am 03.02.10 19:11, schrieb John Bokma:
>> Alan Harris-Reid<alan at baselinedata.co.uk>  writes:
>>
>>> I have a web-page where each row in a grid has edit/delete buttons to
>>> enable the user to maintain a selected record on another page.  The
>>> buttons are in the form of a link with href='/item_edit?id=123', but
>>> this string appears in the URL and gives clues as to how to bypass the
>>> correct sequence of events, and could be risky if they entered the URL
>>> directly (especially when it comes to deleting records).
>>
>> You should *never* use a GET request to do actions like deleting
>> records. You already are aware of it being risky, so don't do this. You
>> should use GET for getting information, and POST for modifying information.
>
> You should *never* say never, because there might be situations where
> exceptions from rules are valid. This is one such cases. Making this a
> post means that you need to resort to javascript to populate & submit
> a hidden HTML-form. Just for the sake of a POST.

Make each edit/delete button a submit button and optionally style it.

> Also, your claim of it being more risky is simply nonsense. GET is a
> tiny bit more prone to tinkering by the average user. But calling this
> less risky is promoting security by obscurity, at most.

Maybe you should think about what happens if someone posts:
<img src="http://example.com/item_delete?id=123"> to a popular forum...

-- 
John Bokma                                                               j3b

Hacking & Hiking in Mexico -  http://johnbokma.com/
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