Is this the correct way to implement a HMAC token system?

Question

I'm architecting a basic SSO solution to pass a user between two sites.

Site A handles authentication against a user database and then generates links to Site B which pass a HMAC token comprising a nonce and the user's ID. The HMAC is hashed with a shared secret between the two sites.

The following shows the token generation in PHP.

$sso['nonce'] = hash('sha1', rand() );
$sso['sharedKey'] = 'someVerySecureString';
$sso['hmacKey'] = hash_hmac ( 'sha256', $test['sharedKey'] , $test['nonce'] );
$sso['userId'] = '123456';
$sso['hmac'] = hash_hmac ( 'sha256', $test['userId'] , $test['hmacKey'] );
$sso['url'] = '/?id=' . urlencode($test['userId']) . '&nonce=' . urlencode($test['nonce']) . '&hmac=' . urlencode($test['hmac']);

I'm using the nonce to HMAC the key before transmission.

This is the PHP function on Site B to validate the token:

function validateSSOToken($sharedKey='someVerySecureString') {

    $isValid = false;

    if ( isset( $_GET['id'] ) 
      && isset( $_GET['nonce'] ) 
      && isset( $_GET['hmac'] ) 
      && strlen( $_GET['nonce'] ) == 40 
      && strlen( $_GET['hmac'] ) == 64) {

        $userId = $_GET['id'];
        $nonce = $_GET['nonce'];
        $hmac = $_GET['hmac'];

        // Sign the key with the nonce to get the tmp key
        $hmacKey = hash_hmac ( 'sha256', $sharedKey, $nonce );

        // rebuild the string to sign
        $localHmac = hash_hmac ( 'sha256', $userId , $hmacKey );

        // Compare against the incoming key
        $isValid = $localHmac == $hmac ? true : false;

    } 
    return $isValid;
}

I'm aware of the replay attack vector and will be addressing it in due course.

Could you advise if this is secure? Is there anything else I might look at considering to achieve the same goal?

Answer 1

This looks good.

I do almost exactly the same thing as a password reset mechanism. I am including it here in case it will help you with adding a timer to help prevent replay attacks.

The user receives an email with a link to click to reset their password (the $oldpassword is the nonce because once the password is changed once, it is not valid anymore and the HMAC key is the old password salt (used by the php crypt function)).

$time = time();
$userid = $user->id;
$oldpassword = hash('sha256', $password_info['Password']);
$token = "t={$time}&i={$userid}&o={$oldpassword}";
$verification = hash_hmac('sha256', $token, $password_info['Salt']);

$newpasswordurl = Router::url('user_r')->uri(array(
    't' => $time,
    'i' => $userid,
    'o' => $oldpassword,
    'v' => $verification,
));

The validation is similar.

$userid = $input['i'];
$time = $input['t'];
$expire_time = date_create_from_format('U', $input['t'])->add(date_interval_create_from_date_string(self::$settings['ResetPassword']['LinkValidityTime']));
$oldpassword = $input['o'];
$hash = $input['v'];

$p_info = self::getPasswordParts($OldPassword);

$token = "t=$time&i=$UserID&o=$oldpassword";
$correct_hash = hash_hmac('sha256', $token, $p_info['Salt']);

if ( ($hash != $correct_hash) || ($oldpassword != hash('sha256', $p_info['Password'])) ) {
    throw new ChangePasswordException("That password link is invalid, has expired or has been used.");
}