Unfortunately signed variables are relatively easily forged.
Here is a short summary of the problem I wrote before:
...there is nothing in place to insure that the signed variable
sent back is the signed variable sent to the browser.
In ad_form for example the key is signed but the signature
says:
<input type="hidden"
name="__key_signature"
value="851 0 2D43063DA4AFDC46574E81151ED48C64939CF3AC" />
the 851 is the token_id and 0 is the expire time (does not expire) and the hash is:
ns_sha1 "$value$token_id$expire_time$secret_token"
Now, all you need to do to forge this is to get some other form to sign an integer (any form which lets you enter an
integer which is subsequently served back signed would work) since there is nothing there tied to the session or a
shared secret or anything like that.
Some ways to fix this would include having a shared secret
(a random string in a session cookie for example) or
a server side secret which is session specific (pick a token_id for the session but don't send it in the request).
One other thing I realized in looking at this is that as far as I can
tell, we don't ever expire tokens which is probably a mistake. We
should probably have a token lifetime parameter and sweep expired
tokens.
