If the entire site uses HTTPS, your sessionId cookie is as secure as the HTTPS encryption at the very least. This is because cookies are sent as HTTP headers, and when using SSL, the HTTP headers are encrypted using the SSL when being transmitted.
// this code will mark the forms authentication cookie and the
// session cookie as Secure.
if (Response.Cookies.Count > 0)
{
foreach (string s in Response.Cookies.AllKeys)
{
if (s == FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName || "asp.net_sessionid".Equals(s, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))
{
Response.Cookies[s].Secure = true;
}
}
}
Adding this to the EndRequest event handler in the global.asax should make this happen for all page calls.
Note: An edit was proposed to add a break; statement inside a successful "secure" assignment. I've rejected this edit based on the idea that it would only allow 1 of the cookies to be forced to secure and the second would be ignored. It is not inconceivable to add a counter or some other metric to determine that both have been secured and to break at that point.
Found that setting the secure property in Session_Start is sufficient, as recommended in MSDN blog "Securing Session ID: ASP/ASP.NET" with some augmentation.
Adding onto @JoelEtherton's solution to fix a newly found security vulnerability. This vulnerability happens if users request HTTP and are redirected to HTTPS, but the sessionid cookie is set as secure on the first request to HTTP. That is now a security vulnerability, according to McAfee Secure.
This code will only secure cookies if request is using HTTPS. It will expire the sessionid cookie, if not HTTPS.
// this code will mark the forms authentication cookie and the
// session cookie as Secure.
if (Request.IsSecureConnection)
{
if (Response.Cookies.Count > 0)
{
foreach (string s in Response.Cookies.AllKeys)
{
if (s == FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName || s.ToLower() == "asp.net_sessionid")
{
Response.Cookies[s].Secure = true;
}
}
}
}
else
{
//if not secure, then don't set session cookie
Response.Cookies["asp.net_sessionid"].Value = string.Empty;
Response.Cookies["asp.net_sessionid"].Expires = new DateTime(2018, 01, 01);
}
__Secure-, which signals to the browser that the Secure attribute is required.
__Host-, which signals to the browser that both the Path=/ and Secure attributes are required, and at the same time, that the Domain attribute must not be present.