Best way to store accessToken and refreshToken in cookies

1 week ago 16
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I’m currently using cookies for authentication in a .NET 9 backend with an Angular 20 frontend. Right now, I store both the accessToken and refreshToken directly in cookies.

I’m trying to improve the security of this approach. One idea I’m considering is:

storing a single cookie (e.g., __session) that contains a combined or encrypted value of both tokens

using another cookie (e.g., cookiesession1) to hold a session identifier

However, I’m not sure if this is a good practice or if it introduces unnecessary complexity. Also, my current backend/frontend implementation is not fully prepared to handle this properly yet.

So my questions are:

Is combining access and refresh tokens into a single cookie a good idea?

Is using a session-based approach (with a session ID in cookies) better than storing tokens directly?

What is the recommended secure pattern for handling authentication with cookies in a .NET + Angular stack?

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