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OWASP Periodic Table of Vulnerabilities - Cookie Theft/Session Hijacking

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Revision as of 19:33, 15 May 2013 by James Landis (talk | contribs)

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Cookie Theft/Session Hijacking

Root Cause Summary

It's possible for an attacker to steal and reuse session identifiers when they are stored or transmitted insecurely.

Browser / Standards Solution

Define a new standard for transmitting session identifiers and managing them within the browser, such as a new request/response header to be used instead of cookies.

Perimeter Solution

  • Make sure that all session identifiers are transmitted over an encrypted protocol.
  • Terminate/regenerate session if the session token is transmitted insecurely, or signal to the application to do so.
  • Enforce the Secure and HttpOnly flags on sensitive cookies using a Web Application Firewall.

Generic Framework Solution

The framework should provide a centralized cookie management API which prevents direct access to cookies. By default, cookies should be handled according to the following rules, which must be explicitly overridden if a developer has a specific need for a cookie with unsafe properties.

  • Apply Secure and HttpOnly flags.
  • Set the Domain and Path parameters for the cookie correctly.

The framework should provide a configurable session management scheme, which includes the following features:

  • Alert user and deauthorize oldest session when multiple simultaneous logins are detected. Multiple simultaneous logins are prohibited by default, but may be enabled by changing a configuration setting.
  • Terminate session and send security SNMP trap or other configurable message if User-Agent string or other client fingerprinting changes.
  • Provide the option to the user when logging in to pin the session to the originating IP.

Custom Framework Solution

None

Custom Code Solution

None

Discussion / Controversy

References

Session Management Cheat Sheet (OWASP)