Sessions in Kong Manager

The Session configuration is secure by default, which may if using HTTP or different domains for the Admin API and Kong Manager. Even if an attacker were to obtain a stale cookie, it would not benefit them since the cookie is encrypted. The encrypted session data may be stored either in Kong or the cookie itself.

• "secret":"<SET_SECRET>": The secret used in keyed HMAC generation. Although the Session Plugin’s default is a random string, the secret must be manually set for use with Kong Manager since it must be the same across all Kong workers/nodes.
• "storage":"<SET_STORAGE>": Where session data is stored. It is by default, but may be more secure if set to "kong" since access to the database would be required.
• "cookie_lifetime":<NUMBER_OF_SECONDS_TO_LIVE>: The duration (in seconds) that the session will remain open; 3600 by default.
• "cookie_secure":<SET_DEPENDING_ON_PROTOCOL>: by default. See Session Security for exceptions.
• "cookie_samesite":"<SET_DEPENDING_ON_DOMAIN>": "Strict" by default. See for exceptions.

For detailed descriptions of each configuration property, learn more in the Session Plugin documentation.

The following properties must be altered depending on the protocol and domains in use:

• If using HTTP instead of HTTPS: "cookie_secure": false
• If using different domains for the Admin API and Kong Manager: "cookie_samesite": "off"

In testing, if using HTTP, the following configuration could be used instead: