HTTP cookie - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. An HTTP cookie (also called web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie or simply cookie) is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in the user's web browser while the user is browsing. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember stateful information (such as items added in the shopping cart in an online store) or to record the user's browsing activity (including clicking particular buttons, logging in, or recording which pages were visited in the past). They can also be used to remember arbitrary pieces of information that the user previously entered into form fields such as names, addresses, passwords, and credit card numbers. Other kinds of cookies perform essential functions in the modern web. Perhaps most importantly, authentication cookies are the most common method used by web servers to know whether the user is logged in or not, and which account they are logged in with. Without such a mechanism, the site would not know whether to send a page containing sensitive information, or require the user to authenticate themselves by logging in. The security of an authentication cookie generally depends on the security of the issuing website and the user's web browser, and on whether the cookie data is encrypted. Microsoft Community is a free community and discussion forum for asking and answering questions about using your Microsoft products. When you need cookie and brownie recipes, turn to the MyRecipes collection with over 1,000 recipes for all kinds of cookies including drop cookies, bar cookies. HTTP cookie This article needs additional citations for. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember stateful information. This can be used to fake logins or change user information. Security vulnerabilities may allow a cookie's data to be read by a hacker, used to gain access to user data, or used to gain access (with the user's credentials) to the website to which the cookie belongs (see cross- site scripting and cross- site request forgery for examples). It was derived from the term . Magic cookie in turn derives from . Vint Cerf and John Klensin represented MCI in technical discussions with Netscape Communications. MCI did not want its servers to have to retain partial transaction states, which led them to ask Netscape to find a way to store that state in each user's computer instead. Cookies provided a solution to the problem of reliably implementing a virtual shopping cart. Version 0. 9beta of Mosaic Netscape, released on October 1. The first use of cookies (out of the labs) was checking whether visitors to the Netscape website had already visited the site. Montulli applied for a patent for the cookie technology in 1. US 5. 77. 46. 70 was granted in 1. Support for cookies was integrated in Internet Explorer in version 2, released in October 1. In particular, cookies were accepted by default, and users were not notified of their presence. The general public learned about cookies after the Financial Times published an article about them on February 1. Cookies were discussed in two U. S. Federal Trade Commission hearings in 1. The development of the formal cookie specifications was already ongoing. In particular, the first discussions about a formal specification started in April 1. A special working group within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) was formed. Two alternative proposals for introducing state in HTTP transactions had been proposed by Brian Behlendorf and David Kristol respectively. But the group, headed by Kristol himself and Lou Montulli, soon decided to use the Netscape specification as a starting point. Girl Scout cookies are made by large national commercial bakeries under license from Girl Scouts of the USA. The bakers licensed by the organization may change from year to year.In February 1. 99. The specification produced by the group was eventually published as RFC 2. February 1. 99. 7. It specifies that third- party cookies were either not allowed at all, or at least not enabled by default. At this time, advertising companies were already using third- party cookies. PRB: Session Variables Do Not Persist Between Requests After You Install Internet Explorer Security Patch MS01-055. The recommendation about third- party cookies of RFC 2. Netscape and Internet Explorer. RFC 2. 10. 9 was superseded by RFC 2. October 2. 00. 0. A definitive specification for cookies as used in the real world was published as RFC 6. April 2. 01. 1. This means that, for the cookie's entire lifespan (which can be as long or as short as its creators want), its information will be transmitted to the server every time the user visits the website that it belongs to, or every time the user views a resource belonging to that website from another website (such as an advertisement). For this reason, persistent cookies are sometimes referred to as tracking cookies because they can be used by advertisers to record information about a user's web browsing habits over an extended period of time. However, they are also used for . They cannot be transmitted over unencrypted connections (i. This makes the cookie less likely to be exposed to cookie theft via eavesdropping. A cookie is made secure by adding the Secure flag to the cookie. Http. Only cookie. An Http. Only cookie cannot be accessed by client- side APIs, such as Java. Script. This restriction eliminates the threat of cookie theft via cross- site scripting (XSS). However, the cookie remains vulnerable to cross- site tracing (XST) and cross- site request forgery (XSRF) attacks. A cookie is given this characteristic by adding the Http. Only flag to the cookie. Same. Site cookie. Google Chrome 5. 1 recently introduced. This restriction mitigates attacks such as cross- site request forgery (XSRF). This is called a first- party cookie. A third- party cookie, however, belongs to a domain different from the one shown in the address bar. This sort of cookie typically appears when web pages feature content from external websites, such as banner advertisements. This opens up the potential for tracking the user's browsing history, and is often used by advertisers in an effort to serve relevant advertisements to each user. As an example, suppose a user visits www. This web site contains an advertisement from ad. Then, the user visits another website, www. Eventually, both of these cookies will be sent to the advertiser when loading their advertisements or visiting their website. The advertiser can then use these cookies to build up a browsing history of the user across all the websites that have ads from this advertiser. As of 2. 01. 4, some websites were setting cookies readable for over 1. Ordinary cookies, by contrast, have an origin of a specific domain name, such as example. Supercookies can be a potential security concern and are therefore often blocked by web browsers. If unblocked by the browser, an attacker in control of a malicious website could set a supercookie and potentially disrupt or impersonate legitimate user requests to another website that shares the same top- level domain or public suffix as the malicious website. For example, a supercookie with an origin of . This can be used to fake logins or change user information. The Public Suffix List. The Public Suffix List is a cross- vendor initiative that aims to provide an accurate and up- to- date list of domain name suffixes. Older versions of browsers may not have an up- to- date list, and will therefore be vulnerable to supercookies from certain domains. Other uses. The term . This is accomplished by storing the cookie's content in multiple locations, such as Flash Local shared object, HTML5 Web storage, and other client- side and even server- side locations. When the cookie's absence is detected, the cookie is recreated using the data stored in these locations. Structure. A cookie consists of the following components. Attributes store information such as the cookie. To keep track of which user is assigned to which shopping cart, the server sends a cookie to the client that contains a unique session identifier (typically, a long string of random letters and numbers). Because cookies are sent to the server with every request the client makes, that session identifier will be sent back to the server every time the user visits a new page on the website, which lets the server know which shopping cart to display to the user. Another popular use of cookies is for logging into websites. When the user visits a website's login page, the web server typically sends the client a cookie containing a unique session identifier. When the user successfully logs in, the server remembers that that particular session identifier has been authenticated, and grants the user access to its services. Because session cookies only contain a unique session identifier, this makes the amount of personal information that a website can save about each user virtually limitless. Session cookies also help to improve page load times, since the amount of information in a session cookie is small and requires little bandwidth. Personalization. Cookies can be used to remember information about the user in order to show relevant content to that user over time. For example, a web server might send a cookie containing the username last used to log in to a website so that it may be filled in automatically the next time the user logs in. Many websites use cookies for personalization based on the user's preferences. Users select their preferences by entering them in a web form and submitting the form to the server. The server encodes the preferences in a cookie and sends the cookie back to the browser. This way, every time the user accesses a page on the website, the server can personalize the page according to the user's preferences. For example, the Google search engine once used cookies to allow users (even non- registered ones) to decide how many search results per page they wanted to see. Also, Duck. Duck. Go uses cookies to allow users to set the viewing preferences like colors of the web page. Tracking. Tracking cookies are used to track users' web browsing habits. This can also be done to some extent by using the IP address of the computer requesting the page or the referer field of the HTTP request header, but cookies allow for greater precision. This can be demonstrated as follows: If the user requests a page of the site, but the request contains no cookie, the server presumes that this is the first page visited by the user. So the server creates a unique identifier (typically a string of random letters and numbers) and sends it as a cookie back to the browser together with the requested page. Microsoft Community. Ask questions, find answers, and learn about Microsoft products and services.
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