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Security Intermediate

What is Session Hijacking?

An attack where an adversary takes over a legitimate user session by stealing or predicting the session identifier.

Session hijacking occurs when an attacker obtains a valid session ID and uses it to impersonate the legitimate user. Attack vectors include network sniffing (intercepting unencrypted session cookies), XSS (JavaScript stealing cookies), session fixation (forcing a known session ID on the victim), and predicting weak session IDs. Prevention measures include HTTPS everywhere (encrypting cookies in transit), HttpOnly flag (preventing JavaScript access), Secure flag (cookies sent only over HTTPS), SameSite attribute (preventing CSRF), session regeneration after login, binding sessions to IP/user-agent, setting short session timeouts, and using cryptographically random session IDs.

Related Terms

Cryptographic Key Management
The practices and procedures for generating, storing, distributing, rotating, and revoking encryption keys securely.
Brute Force Attack
An attack method that systematically tries all possible combinations of passwords or keys until the correct one is found.
CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing)
A browser security mechanism that controls which web domains can access resources from another domain via HTTP requests.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
A strategy and set of tools that detect and prevent unauthorized transmission of sensitive data outside an organization.
Firewall Rules
Configuration entries that define which network traffic is allowed or blocked based on source, destination, port, and protocol.
Input Validation
The process of verifying that user-supplied data meets expected formats, types, and ranges before processing it.
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