How to set same-site cookie flag in Spring Boot?

Is it possible to set Same-Site Cookie flag in Spring Boot?

My problem in Chrome:

A cookie associated with a cross-site resource at http://google.com/ was set without the SameSite attribute. A future release of Chrome will only deliver cookies with cross-site requests if they are set with SameSite=None and Secure. You can review cookies in developer tools under Application>Storage>Cookies and see more details at https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5088147346030592 and https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5633521622188032.


How to solve this problem?

This is an open issue with Spring Security (https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-security/issues/7537)

As I inspected in Spring-Boot (2.1.7.RELEASE), By Default it uses DefaultCookieSerializer which carry a property sameSite defaulting to Lax.

You can modify this upon application boot, through the following code.

Note: This is a hack until a real fix (configuration) is exposed upon next spring release.

@Component
@AllArgsConstructor
public class SameSiteInjector {

  private final ApplicationContext applicationContext;

  @EventListener
  public void onApplicationEvent(ContextRefreshedEvent event) {
    DefaultCookieSerializer cookieSerializer = applicationContext.getBean(DefaultCookieSerializer.class);
    log.info("Received DefaultCookieSerializer, Overriding SameSite Strict");
    cookieSerializer.setSameSite("strict");
  }
}

The current version of Spring Boot (2.5.0-SNAPSHOT) doesn't support SameSite cookie attribute and there is no setting to enable it.

The Java Servlet 4.0 specification doesn't support the SameSite cookie attribute. You can see available attributes by opening javax.servlet.http.Cookie java class.

However, there are a couple of workarounds. You can override Set-Cookie attribute manually.

The first approach (using custom Spring HttpFirewall) and wrapper around request:

You need to wrap request and adjust cookies right after session is created. You can achieve it by defining the following classes:

one bean (You can define it inside SecurityConfig if you want to hold everything in one place. I just put @Component annotation on it for brevity)

package hello.approach1;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.springframework.security.web.firewall.FirewalledRequest;
import org.springframework.security.web.firewall.HttpFirewall;
import org.springframework.security.web.firewall.RequestRejectedException;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class CustomHttpFirewall implements HttpFirewall {

    @Override
    public FirewalledRequest getFirewalledRequest(HttpServletRequest request) throws RequestRejectedException {
        return new RequestWrapper(request);
    }

    @Override
    public HttpServletResponse getFirewalledResponse(HttpServletResponse response) {
        return new ResponseWrapper(response);
    }

}

first wrapper class

package hello.approach1;

import java.util.Collection;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpSession;

import org.springframework.http.HttpHeaders;
import org.springframework.security.web.firewall.FirewalledRequest;
import org.springframework.web.context.request.RequestContextHolder;
import org.springframework.web.context.request.ServletRequestAttributes;

/**
 * Wrapper around HttpServletRequest that overwrites Set-Cookie response header and adds SameSite=None portion.
 */
public class RequestWrapper extends FirewalledRequest {

    /**
     * Constructs a request object wrapping the given request.
     *
     * @param request The request to wrap
     * @throws IllegalArgumentException if the request is null
     */
    public RequestWrapper(HttpServletRequest request) {
        super(request);
    }

    /**
     * Must be empty by default in Spring Boot. See FirewalledRequest.
     */
    @Override
    public void reset() {
    }

    @Override
    public HttpSession getSession(boolean create) {
        HttpSession session = super.getSession(create);

        if (create) {
            ServletRequestAttributes ra = (ServletRequestAttributes) RequestContextHolder.getRequestAttributes();
            if (ra != null) {
                overwriteSetCookie(ra.getResponse());
            }
        }

        return session;
    }

    @Override
    public String changeSessionId() {
        String newSessionId = super.changeSessionId();
        ServletRequestAttributes ra = (ServletRequestAttributes) RequestContextHolder.getRequestAttributes();
        if (ra != null) {
            overwriteSetCookie(ra.getResponse());
        }
        return newSessionId;
    }

    private void overwriteSetCookie(HttpServletResponse response) {
        if (response != null) {
            Collection<String> headers = response.getHeaders(HttpHeaders.SET_COOKIE);
            boolean firstHeader = true;
            for (String header : headers) { // there can be multiple Set-Cookie attributes
                if (firstHeader) {
                    response.setHeader(HttpHeaders.SET_COOKIE, String.format("%s; %s", header, "SameSite=None")); // set
                    firstHeader = false;
                    continue;
                }
                response.addHeader(HttpHeaders.SET_COOKIE, String.format("%s; %s", header, "SameSite=None")); // add
            }
        }
    }
}

second wrapper class

package hello.approach1;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponseWrapper;

/**
 * Dummy implementation.
 * To be aligned with RequestWrapper.
 */
public class ResponseWrapper extends HttpServletResponseWrapper {
    /**
     * Constructs a response adaptor wrapping the given response.
     *
     * @param response The response to be wrapped
     * @throws IllegalArgumentException if the response is null
     */
    public ResponseWrapper(HttpServletResponse response) {
        super(response);
    }
}

The second approach (using Spring's AuthenticationSuccessHandler):

This approach doesn't work for basic authentication. In case basic authentication, response is flushed/committed right after controller returns response object, before SameSiteFilter#addSameSiteCookieAttribute is called.

package hello.approach2;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Collection;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.springframework.http.HttpHeaders;
import org.springframework.security.core.Authentication;
import org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AuthenticationSuccessHandler;

public class AuthenticationSuccessHandlerImpl implements AuthenticationSuccessHandler {

    @Override
    public void onAuthenticationSuccess(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, Authentication authentication) throws IOException {
        addSameSiteCookieAttribute(response);    // add SameSite=strict to Set-Cookie attribute
        response.sendRedirect("/hello"); // redirect to hello.html after success auth
    }

    private void addSameSiteCookieAttribute(HttpServletResponse response) {
        Collection<String> headers = response.getHeaders(HttpHeaders.SET_COOKIE);
        boolean firstHeader = true;
        for (String header : headers) { // there can be multiple Set-Cookie attributes
            if (firstHeader) {
                response.setHeader(HttpHeaders.SET_COOKIE, String.format("%s; %s", header, "SameSite=Strict"));
                firstHeader = false;
                continue;
            }
            response.addHeader(HttpHeaders.SET_COOKIE, String.format("%s; %s", header, "SameSite=Strict"));
        }
    }
}

The third approach (using javax.servlet.Filter):

This approach doesn't work for basic authentication. In case basic authentication, response is flushed/committed right after controller returns response object, before SameSiteFilter#addSameSiteCookieAttribute is called.

package hello.approach3;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Collection;

import javax.servlet.FilterChain;
import javax.servlet.FilterConfig;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.ServletResponse;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.springframework.http.HttpHeaders;

public class SameSiteFilter implements javax.servlet.Filter {
    @Override
    public void init(FilterConfig filterConfig) throws ServletException {

    }

    @Override
    public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {
        chain.doFilter(request, response);
        addSameSiteCookieAttribute((HttpServletResponse) response); // add SameSite=strict cookie attribute
    }

    private void addSameSiteCookieAttribute(HttpServletResponse response) {
        Collection<String> headers = response.getHeaders(HttpHeaders.SET_COOKIE);
        boolean firstHeader = true;
        for (String header : headers) { // there can be multiple Set-Cookie attributes
            if (firstHeader) {
                response.setHeader(HttpHeaders.SET_COOKIE, String.format("%s; %s", header, "SameSite=Strict"));
                firstHeader = false;
                continue;
            }
            response.addHeader(HttpHeaders.SET_COOKIE, String.format("%s; %s", header, "SameSite=Strict"));
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void destroy() {

    }
}

You can look at this demo project on the GitHub for more details on the configuration for org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AuthenticationSuccessHandler or javax.servlet.Filter.

The SecurityConfig contains all the necessary configuration.

Using addHeader is not guaranteed to work because basically the Servlet container manages the creation of the Session and Cookie. For example, the second and third approaches won't work in case you return JSON in response body because application server will overwrite Set-Cookie header during flushing of response. However, second and third approaches will work in cases, when you redirect a user to another page after successful authentication.

Pay attention that Postman doesn't render/support SameSite cookie attribute under Cookies section (at least at the time of writing). You can look at Set-Cookie response header or use curl to see if SameSite cookie attribute was added.