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Admin Tools

#14371 Secret URL Parameter

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
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PHP version
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Admin Tools version
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Latest post by nicholas on Wednesday, 12 December 2012 12:14 CST

Wednesday, 12 December 2012 10:18 CST

bytekultur

Hi,

As I have already posted all my details, I will only refer to Ticket "#13968 – Secret URL Parameter not working" here.

Description of my issue:

I have a client using Admin Tools, and the members of his organisation are all around the globe, so we really would benefit of the secret URL Parameter. Unfortunately AdminTool is redirecting whether or not one uses the url parameter

I was told to deactivate all potential redirects. I have a test domain with a copy of the client's website on which I did the following:

- no rewrite and no SEF URL's
- no htaccess activated
- deleted sessions table

-> and then tested with my mobile phone as this has another IP and has not yet visited the site (no cache or blacklist problems)

Unfortunately I get the same result. Is there anything else I might have overseen?

 

Thanks for any help,
Terry

--- byteKultur.net

 

Wednesday, 12 December 2012 10:44 CST

nicholas

The secret URL parameter is stored in the user's session. The only reason that it's not remembered is that the session cookie is not stored. This may happen if you're using a CDN which doesn't honour session cookies. Apart from that, I can't see any other reason why this would happen.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Wednesday, 12 December 2012 12:07 CST

bytekultur

Ok... this I don't really understand. The user adds the parameter to the url, and in this moment, stored or not, the url parameter should allow the user to go to the backend, no?

--- byteKultur.net

 

Wednesday, 12 December 2012 12:14 CST

nicholas

The user adds the parameter to the URL. The System - Admin Tools plugin reads it and stores a flag in the Joomla! user session. On the next page load (the actual login step) the System - Admin Tools plugin checks that this flag exists. If it doesn't, it redirects the user back to the main page. If it does, it allows the log in to proceed.

There's a critical step to that procedure. The page load (when you submit the login form). The only thing that will preserve the session variable through the page load is the session cookie. If the session cookie is not sotred or is somehow stripped out (e.g. what happens when you have a bad proxy or an ill-configured CDN between the user and the server) then the aforementioned procedure fails. It fails because Joomla! starts a new session, which lacks the security check flag and results in the user being kicked out.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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