I'm no security expert, but wouldn't it be smarter to create a session ID and store that in the cookie instead. Otherwise, I could just create a cookie wherever I am with the user ID I would like to log in as with hopes that they have already logged in somewhere else.

What I usually like to do is create the session ID, and at each page request, verify that the IP address hasn't changed. That's about as far as I go for security, but since they are usually just quick throw-away/personal apps, it hasn't been an issue.

Here's some simple code for creating a session ID: 
my @chars = ('a'..'z', 'A'..'Z', 0..9);
my $id_len = 20;

my $session_id = join '', @chars[map { rand scalar @chars } 1..$id_len
+ ];

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In reply to Re^2: session management by lostjimmy
in thread session management by Anonymous Monk

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