This site is the archived OWASP Foundation Wiki and is no longer accepting Account Requests.
To view the new OWASP Foundation website, please visit https://owasp.org

Difference between revisions of "Session hijacking attack"

From OWASP
Jump to: navigation, search
Line 19: Line 19:
 
• Man-in-the-middle attacks.
 
• Man-in-the-middle attacks.
  
•Man-in-the-browser attacks
+
• Man-in-the-browser attacks
  
 
== Severity ==
 
== Severity ==

Revision as of 17:22, 5 November 2007

This is an Attack. To view all attacks, please see the Attack Category page.


Description

The session hijack attack consists of the exploitation of the web session control mechanism, which is normally managed for a session token.

Because a http communication use many different TCP connection, the web server need a method to recognize every user’s connections. The most useful method in use, depends on a token that the Web Server send to the client browser after a successful client authentication. A session token is normally composed by a string of variable width and it could be used indifferent ways, like: in the URL, in the header of the http requisition as a cookie or in the other parts of the header of the http request or yet in the body of the http requisition.

The Session Hijacking attack compromise the session token by stealing or predicting a valid session token to gain unauthorized access to the Web Server.

The session token could be compromised in different ways, the most common are:

• Predictable session token;

• Session Sniffing;

• Client-side attacks (XSS, malicious JavaScript Codes, Trojans, etc);

• Man-in-the-middle attacks.

• Man-in-the-browser attacks

Severity

High

Likelihood of exploitation

Very High

Examples

Example 1

Session Sniffing

In the example as we can see, first the attacker uses a sniffer to capture a valid token session called “Session ID”, then he uses the valid token session to gain unauthorized access to the Web Server.


Session Hijacking 3.JPG

Figure 2. Manipulating the token session executing the session hijacking attack.

Example 2

Cross-site script attack

The attacker can compromise the session token by using malicious code or programs running at the client-side, the example will show how the attacker could use a XSS attack to steal the session token. If an attacker sends a crafted link to the victim with the malicious JavaScript, when the victim click on the link, the JavaScript will run and complete the instructions made by the attacker. The example in figure 3 uses an XSS attack to shows the cookie value of the current session, using the same technique is possible to create a specific Javascript code that will send the cookie to the attacker:

<SCRIPT>alert(document.cookie);</SCRIPT>


Code Injection.JPG

Figure 3. Code injection.


Other Examples The following attacks acts intercepting the information exchange between the client and the server

Man-in-the-middle

Man-in-the-browser


External References

Related Threats

Category: Authorization

Related Attacks

Related Vulnerabilities

Category:Input Validation Vulnerability

Related Countermeasures

Category:Session Management