Is this Rails JSON authentication API (using Devise) secure?

You don’t want to disable CSRF, I have read that people think it doesn’t apply to JSON APIs for some reason, but this is a misunderstanding. To keep it enabled, you want to make a few changes:

• on there server side add a after_filter to your sessions controller:

  after_filter :set_csrf_header, only: [:new, :create]
  
  protected
  
  def set_csrf_header
     response.headers['X-CSRF-Token'] = form_authenticity_token
  end
  

  This will generate a token, put it in your session and copy it in the response header for selected actions.

• client side (iOS) you need to make sure two things are in place.

  • your client needs to scan all server responses for this header and retain it when it is passed along.

    ... get ahold of response object
    // response may be a NSURLResponse object, so convert:
    NSHTTPURLResponse *httpResponse = (NSHTTPURLResponse*)response;
    // grab token if present, make sure you have a config object to store it in
    NSString *token = [[httpResponse allHeaderFields] objectForKey:@"X-CSRF-Token"];
    if (token)
       [yourConfig setCsrfToken:token];
    

  • finally, your client needs to add this token to all ‘non GET’ requests it sends out:

    ... get ahold of your request object
    if (yourConfig.csrfToken && ![request.httpMethod isEqualToString:@"GET"])
      [request setValue:yourConfig.csrfToken forHTTPHeaderField:@"X-CSRF-Token"];
    

Final piece of the puzzle is to understand that when logging in to devise, two subsequent sessions/csrf tokens are being used. A login flow would look like this:

GET /users/sign_in ->
  // new action is called, initial token is set
  // now send login form on callback:
  POST /users/sign_in <username, password> ->
    // create action called, token is reset
    // when login is successful, session and token are replaced 
    // and you can send authenticated requests