Socket.io Security Issues

Question

I'm wondering how I could secure my socket.io connection to the server from th following.

Security Issues:

• What would stop malicious users from connecting to the socket server via client side code?

Example:

OUTSIDE DOMAIN REQUEST var socket = io.connect('http://Mydomain', {port: 4000});

• Users can seemingly create thousands of concurrent connections just by opening a different browser window.

How can I prevent these issues?

Singultus

look at github.com/LearnBoost/socket.io/wiki/Authorizing and inspect user's address (ip) and header request via socket.handshake or global authorize – Discounter

Answer 1

You should be able to check serverside that the HTTP referrer is correct. Check the socket.io spec for info on both http referring as well as handshaking.

https://github.com/socketio/socket.io-protocol

Also 0.8 has referrer verification. Havent used it before, but this may be a place to start looking:

https://github.com/LearnBoost/socket.io/pull/481

Seasickness

Thanks, but what if there are multiple connections from the same user? – Singultus

Answer 2

Well, if your (real) clients are coming from a well know location, you'd probably want to to block everyone else at the firewall level. Assuming your service is available to everyone, you can probably look into client-server handshake mechanism.

Travis