Kaltura block on Macintosh Safari and Chrome - 3rd Party Cookies

[jaherrin]

Hello.

I have had no luck over the last few days with my attempts to get Safari and Chrome to work with Canvas. Firefox will allow me to access Kaltura for some reason. My attempts at seeking support through UITS at Indiana University have been nothing but frustrating. 

When I log in to Chrome or Safari and enter Canvas, the Kaltura app will not open. It gives me this message:

"It seems your browser is blocking 3rd party session cookies which are required for the Kaltura application. To resolve this issue, please update your settings to allow 3rd party cookies."

Here's what I have tried:

• Turned off and switch VPNs
• Set preferences to accept all 3rd Party Cookies
• Restart both browsers and Macbook running latest OS.
• Emptied all caches

I made no changes to Firefox, except allowing for 3rd party cookies and it worked. Yes, I should stick with Firefox and I will for now, but this kind of error disturbs me because my students use a variety of browsers. My job is to teach them and this kind of thing is a significant disruption. 

Can anyone off some guidance. I know my way around, but I'm no sys-admin. I just want to be able to send my students the videos they have and not have to play - which browser will work today.

 Thank you for any help.

John Herrin

jaherrin@iu.edu

Johnaherrin@me.com

[chriscas]

Hi @jaherrin,

For the time being, this is likely something your institution's Canvas and Kaltura administrators will need to work together to remedy.  Since browsers are tightening control over 3rd party cookies more and more, this problem is only likely to get worse under the default Canvas and Kaltura domains.

One solution is to have vanity/custom domains on both Canvas (ex: canvas.indiana.edu) and Kaltura (ex: kaltura.indiana.edu) so that the cookies would no longer be considered 3rd party.  This may be the quickest fix, but applying custom domains is not always easy and could lead to other Canvas integrated tools breaking if they are not updated as well.  We went down this path about 5 years ago (before having too many LTIs installed, so it was more manageable) and have not had any 3rd party cookie problems since then.  There has been a lot of chatter about this on Kaltura listservs and in their community too, so I think a lot of Kaltura admins are aware of this potential fix.

Another potential solution would be for Kaltura to stop relying on cookies to store info.  This may be the best fix, but it would probably require Kaltura to do major rewrites of a lot of their code, which will not be quick now easy on their end.  If cookie support is eventually dropped by browsers (like it appears Google is considering for Chrome), this ultimately may have to happen so hopefully Kaltura is at least thinking about a plan.

-Chris

[ColtonSwapp · Accepted solution]

Hello @jaherrin 

I apologize that you are having difficulty with your browser and Kaltura. 

It sounds like it might be related to a stubborn blocked cookie or permission on your default browsers. Have you checked to see if there is a blocked cookie in the browsers? Here is a guide for checking that in CHROME and SAFARI. The cookie should be list as Kaltura Capture or Kaltura Media Player. 

Do you know if disabling the browser setting for Cross-Site Tracking makes any difference when you try to pull up the Kaltura Videos?

HERE is a guide for how to access that setting. 

Have you checked to see if the application loads while using an incognito window in Chrome and Safari? 

Have you tried to contact Kaltura about this yet? HERE is a link to their contact page. 

[Equals42]

That is a workaround for some but not a solution. You've directed them to decrease their browser security to enable Kaltura when there are ways to avoid this being a 3rd party session cookie in the first place. (One mentioned above is vanity domains.) For some, the MDM admins for their laptops and iPads may not allow such changes. For someone taking a cybersecurity course, it's ironic that I have to revert security changes to take the course.