There are a ton of browser extensions that promise to protect your privacy, which leads to some natural questions Which is the best Do they all do the same thing. Web Authentication, Session Management, and Access Control. A web session is a sequence of network HTTP request and response transactions associated to the. When logging into a website you usually start by submitting your username and password. The server then checks to see if an account matching this information exists. Other Forms of Session Hijacking. Maninthemiddle is a form of session hijacking. Other forms of session hijacking similar to maninthemiddle are. From defining the latest tech buzzword to exploring enterpriselevel decisions, Techopedia aims to help you understand technology. A Firefox browser addon called Firesheep makes hacking Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Live accounts a snap over unencrypted wireless networks. Keep in mind, Im not a therapist or any other kind of health professionaljust a guy whos willing to tell it like it is. I simply want to give you the tools. From network security protocols to security software, our networking security dictionary offers a glossary of important terms you need to know. Session Management Cheat Sheet OWASPLast revision mmddyy 0. Introduction. Web Authentication, Session Management, and Access Control. Tekken Tag 2 Xbox 360 Game Save. A web session is a sequence of network HTTP request and response transactions associated to the same user. Modern and complex web applications require the retaining of information or status about each user for the duration of multiple requests. Therefore, sessions provide the ability to establish variables such as access rights and localization settings which will apply to each and every interaction a user has with the web application for the duration of the session. Web applications can create sessions to keep track of anonymous users after the very first user request. An example would be maintaining the user language preference. Additionally, web applications will make use of sessions once the user has authenticated. This ensures the ability to identify the user on any subsequent requests as well as being able to apply security access controls, authorized access to the user private data, and to increase the usability of the application. Session Sidejacking Tools' title='Session Sidejacking Tools' />Therefore, current web applications can provide session capabilities both pre and post authentication. Once an authenticated session has been established, the session ID or token is temporarily equivalent to the strongest authentication method used by the application, such as username and password, passphrases, one time passwords OTP, client based digital certificates, smartcards, or biometrics such as fingerprint or eye retina. See the OWASP Authentication Cheat Sheet. HTTP is a stateless protocol RFC2. Therefore, in order to introduce the concept of a session, it is required to implement session management capabilities that link both the authentication and access control or authorization modules commonly available in web applications. The session ID or token binds the user authentication credentials in the form of a user session to the user HTTP traffic and the appropriate access controls enforced by the web application. Eltek Ups Software'>Eltek Ups Software. The complexity of these three components authentication, session management, and access control in modern web applications, plus the fact that its implementation and binding resides on the web developers hands as web development framework do not provide strict relationships between these modules, makes the implementation of a secure session management module very challenging. The disclosure, capture, prediction, brute force, or fixation of the session ID will lead to session hijacking or sidejacking attacks, where an attacker is able to fully impersonate a victim user in the web application. Attackers can perform two types of session hijacking attacks, targeted or generic. In a targeted attack, the attackers goal is to impersonate a specific or privileged web application victim user. For generic attacks, the attackers goal is to impersonate or get access as any valid or legitimate user in the web application. Session ID Properties. In order to keep the authenticated state and track the users progress within the web application, applications provide users with a session identifier session ID or token that is assigned at session creation time, and is shared and exchanged by the user and the web application for the duration of the session it is sent on every HTTP request. The session ID is a namevalue pair. With the goal of implementing secure session IDs, the generation of identifiers IDs or tokens must meet the following properties. Session ID Name Fingerprinting. The name used by the session ID should not be extremely descriptive nor offer unnecessary details about the purpose and meaning of the ID. The session ID names used by the most common web application development frameworks can be easily fingerprinted 0, such as PHPSESSID PHP, JSESSIONID J2. EE, CFID CFTOKEN Cold. Fusion, ASP. NETSession. Id ASP. NET, etc. Therefore, the session ID name can disclose the technologies and programming languages used by the web application. It is recommended to change the default session ID name of the web development framework to a generic name, such as id. Session ID Length. The session ID must be long enough to prevent brute force attacks, where an attacker can go through the whole range of ID values and verify the existence of valid sessions. The session ID length must be at least 1. NOTE The session ID length of 1. Session ID Entropy. However, this number should not be considered as an absolute minimum value, as other implementation factors might influence its strength. For example, there are well known implementations, such as Microsoft ASP. NET, making use of 1. IDs represented by 2. Session ID Entropy. The session ID must be unpredictable random enough to prevent guessing attacks, where an attacker is able to guess or predict the ID of a valid session through statistical analysis techniques. For this purpose, a good PRNG Pseudo Random Number Generator must be used. The session ID value must provide at least 6. PRNG is used, this value is estimated to be half the length of the session ID. NOTE The session ID entropy is really affected by other external and difficult to measure factors, such as the number of concurrent active sessions the web application commonly has, the absolute session expiration timeout, the amount of session ID guesses per second the attacker can make and the target web application can support, etc 2. If a session ID with an entropy of 6. ID, assuming the attacker can try 1. Session ID Content or ValueThe session ID content or value must be meaningless to prevent information disclosure attacks, where an attacker is able to decode the contents of the ID and extract details of the user, the session, or the inner workings of the web application. The session ID must simply be an identifier on the client side, and its value must never include sensitive information or PII. The meaning and business or application logic associated to the session ID must be stored on the server side, and specifically, in session objects or in a session management database or repository. The stored information can include the client IP address, User Agent, e mail, username, user ID, role, privilege level, access rights, language preferences, account ID, current state, last login, session timeouts, and other internal session details. If the session objects and properties contain sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, it is required to duly encrypt and protect the session management repository. It is recommended to create cryptographically strong session IDs through the usage of cryptographic hash functions such as SHA1 1. Session Management Implementation. The session management implementation defines the exchange mechanism that will be used between the user and the web application to share and continuously exchange the session ID. There are multiple mechanisms available in HTTP to maintain session state within web applications, such as cookies standard HTTP header, URL parameters URL rewriting RFC 2. URL arguments on GET requests, body arguments on POST requests, such as hidden form fields HTML forms, or proprietary HTTP headers. The preferred session ID exchange mechanism should allow defining advanced token properties, such as the token expiration date and time, or granular usage constraints. This is one of the reasons why cookies RFCs 2. ID exchange mechanisms, offering advanced capabilities not available in other methods.