PHP Session Management Best Practices

PHP sessions store user state server-side, referencing it via a cookie. Mishandling them is a top source of security vulnerabilities.

Regenerate Session IDs

Call session_regenerate_id(true) on privilege escalation (e.g., after login) to prevent session fixation attacks.

Use Secure Cookie Flags

Set session.cookie_secure = 1 and session.cookie_httponly = 1 in your php.ini or at runtime via ini_set().

Configure a Custom Session Handler

On Elastic Beanstalk with multiple instances, store sessions in ElastiCache (Redis/Memcached) so every instance shares the same session data.