I am setting up a login page, and I have some security questions / concerns.
I have a login form (username, password) on a NON-secure page, let's say:
http://www.example.com/login.php
When the user fills in the form and clicks the "Submit" button,
the form POST's a "clear-text" query-string to a secure page:
https://somethingelse.example.com/post.php or https://entirelydifferent.otherdomain.com/post.php
The login form is a standard html form like:
<form method="post" action="https://somethingelse.example.com/post.php>
...
</form>
So, the "query-string" is clear-text (not obfuscated or encrypted in any way), but I'm sure (I hope) the process of doing a "post" to an "https:" url will encrypt the query-string.
The code in "post.php" validates the username and password in the form data, and redirects to a NON-secure page based on success or fail:
http://www.example.com/success.php
or http://www.example.com/fail.php (or perhaps back to http://www.example.com/login.php)
Is this a proper (secure) setup for "https:" login process, or does this cause security or other issues ?
Should one or more of the "http:" pages (login.php, success.php, fail.php) be changed to "https:" (secure) pages ?
Is it an issue (security or otherwise) if the sub-domain or domain changes between the various steps in the example ?
Is it required by the process for certain of these pages to be on the same domain and the same sub-domain ?
Also, it should be noted that I am not handling any critical data like credit card numbers on any pages.
