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10.1. Session Management Attacks

HTTP is a stateless protocol. It was never designed to handle sessions. Though this helped the Web take off, it presents a major problem for web application designers. No one anticipated the Web being used as an application platform. It would have been much better to have session management built right into the HTTP standard. But since it wasn't, it is now re-implemented by every application separately. Cookies were designed to help with sessions but they fall short of finishing the job.

10.1.1. Cookies

Cookies are a mechanism for web servers and web applications to remember some information about a client. Prior to their invention, there was no way to uniquely identify a client. The only other piece of information that can be used for identification is the IP address. Workstations on local networks often have static, routable IP addresses that rarely change. These addresses can be used for pretty reliable user tracking. But in most other situations, there are too many unknowns to use IP addresses for identification:

  • Sometimes workstations are configured to retrieve an unused IP address from a pool of addresses at boot time, usually using a DHCP server. If users turn off their computers daily, their IP addresses can (in theory) be different each day. Thus, an IP address used by one workstation one day can be assigned to a different workstation the next day.

  • Some workstations are not allowed to access web content directly and instead must do so through a web proxy (typically as a matter of corporate policy). The IP address of the proxy is all that is visible from the outside.

  • Some workstations think they are accessing the Web directly, but their traffic is being changed in real time by a device known as a Network Address Translator (NAT). The address of the NAT is all that is visible from the outside.

  • Dial-up users and many DSL users regularly get assigned a different IP address every time they connect to the Internet. Only a small percentage of dial-up users have their own IP addresses.

  • Some dial-up users (for example, those coming through AOL) can have a different IP address on each HTTP request, as their providers route their original requests through a cluster of transparent HTTP proxies.

  • Finally, some users do not want their IP addresses to be known. They configure their clients to use so-called open proxies and route HTTP requests through them. It is even possible to chain many proxies together and route requests through all of them at once.

  • Even in the case of a computer with a permanent real (routable) IP address, many users could be using the same workstation. User tracking via an IP address would, therefore, view all these users as a single user.

Something had to be done to identify users. With stateful protocols, you at least know the address of the client throughout the session. To solve the problem for stateless protocols, people at Netscape invented cookies. Perhaps Netscape engineers thought about fortune cookies when they thought of the name. Here is how they work:

  1. Upon first visit (first HTTP request), the site stores information identifying a session into a cookie and sends the cookie to the browser.

  2. The browser does not usually care about the content of a cookie (there are some exceptions as we shall see later), but it will send the cookie back to the site with every subsequent HTTP request.

  3. The site, upon receiving the cookie, retrieves the information out of it and uses it for its operations.

There are two types of cookies:


Session cookies

Session cookies are sent from the server without an expiry date. Because of that they will only last as long as the browser application is open (the cookies are stored in memory). As soon as the browser closes (the whole browser application, not just the window that was used to access the site), the cookie disappears. Session cookies are used to simulate per-session persistence and create an illusion of a session. This is described in detail later in this chapter.


Persistent cookies

Persistent cookies are stored on disk and loaded every time the browser starts. These cookies have an expiry date and exist until the date is reached. They are used to store long-lived information about the user. For example, low-risk applications can use such cookies to recognize existing users and automatically log them in.

Cookies are transported using HTTP headers. Web servers send cookies in a Set-Cookie header. Clients return them in a Cookie header. Newer versions of the standard introduce the names Set-Cookie2 and Cookie2.

Clients normally send cookies back only to the servers where they originated, or servers that share the same domain name (and are thus assumed to be part of the same network).

To avoid DoS attacks by rogue web servers against browsers, some limits are imposed by the cookie specification (for example, the maximum length is limited and so is the total number of cookies).

Further information on cookies is available from:

10.1.2. Session Management Concepts

Session management is closely related to authentication, but while session management is generally needed for authentication, the relationship is not mandatory the other way around: sessions exist even when the user is not authenticated. But the concept is similar:

  1. When a client comes to the application for the first time (or, more precisely, without having session information associated with it), a new session is created.

  2. The application creates what is known as a session token (or session ID) and sends it back to the client.

  3. If the client includes the session token with every subsequent request then the application can use its contents to match the request to the session.

10.1.3. Keeping in Touch with Clients

There are three ways to implement sessions:


Cookies

For sessions to exist, a piece of information must be forwarded back and forth between the server and a client, and cookies were designed for that purpose. Using a cookie is easy: programmers simply need to pick a name for the cookie and store the session token inside.


Extra page parameter

With this approach, every page is changed to include an additional parameter. The parameter contains a session token. Receiving such a parameter is easy. What is more complicated is ensuring every link in the page contains it. One way to do it is to programmatically construct every link (for GET requests) and every form (for POST requests). This is difficult. Another way is to have a page post-processing phase: when the page construction is completed, a script locates all links and forms and makes changes to include the session token. This is easier but does not always work. For example, if a link is generated in JavaScript code, the post-processor will not detect it to add the session token.


Embedding the session token into the URL

You can have the application embed the session token into the URL. For example, /view.php becomes something like /view.php/3f9hba3578faf3c983/. The beauty of this approach (for programmers) is that it does not require additional effort to make it work. A small piece of code strips out the session token before individual page processing starts, and the programmer is not even aware of how the session management works.

Cookies are by far the simplest mechanism to implement sessions and should always be used as a first choice. The other two mechanisms should be used as alternatives in cases where the user's application does not support cookies (or the user does not accept cookies).

10.1.4. Session Tokens

Session tokens can be considered temporary passwords. As with all passwords, they must be difficult to guess or the whole session management scheme will collapse. Ideal session tokens should have the following characteristics:

  • Long

  • Not predictable (e.g., not issued sequentially)

  • Unique

The reasons for these requirements will become clear once we start to discuss different ways of breaking session management.

10.1.5. Session Attacks

Attacks against session management are popular because of the high possible gain. Once an attacker learns a session token, he gets instant access to the application with the privileges of the user whose session token he stole.

10.1.5.1 Session hijacking

There are many ways to attempt to steal session tokens:


Communication interception

When the communication channel is not secure, then no information is safe, session tokens included. The danger of someone tapping into the local traffic to retrieve session tokens is likely when applications are used internally and there is a large concentration of users on the same LAN.


Involuntary token leak

URL-based session management techniques are vulnerable in many ways. Someone looking over a shoulder could memorize or write down the session token and then resume the session from somewhere else.


Voluntary token leak

Another issue with URL-based session management techniques is that session tokens can leak. Sometimes users themselves do it by copying a page URL into an email or to a message board.


Token leak through the Referer request header

As you may be aware, the Referer request header field contains the URL of the page from which a link was followed to the current page. If that URL contains a session token and the user is making a jump to another (likely untrusted) site, the administrator of that web site will be able to strip the session token from access logs. Direct all external links to go through an intermediary internal script to prevent tokens from leaking this way.


Session fixation

Session tokens are created when they do not exist. But it is also possible for an attacker to create a session first and then send someone else a link with the session token embedded in it. The second person would assume the session, possibly performing authentication to establish trust, with the attacker knowing the session token all along. For more information, read the paper by Mitja Kolsek, of ACROS Security, entitled "Session Fixation Vulnerability in Web-based Applications" (http://www.acros.si/papers/session_fixation.pdf).


Cross-site scripting attacks

Cross-site scripting attacks (XSS) are the favorite methods of stealing a session token from a client. By injecting a small piece of code into the victim's browser, the session token can be delivered to the attacker. (XSS attacks are explained in the Section 10.6.2 later in this chapter.)

10.1.5.2 Brute-force attacks

If all else fails, an attacker can attempt to brute-force his way into an application. Applications will generate a new token if you do not supply one, and they typically completely fail to monitor brute-force attacks. An automated script can, in theory, work for days until it produces results.

The use of a flawed session token generation algorithm can dramatically shorten the time needed to brute-force a session. Excellent coverage of session brute-force attacks is provided in the following paper:

"Brute-Force Exploitation of Web Application Session Ids" by David Endler (iDEFENSE Labs) (http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-02/endler/iDEFENSE%20SessionIDs.pdf)

Session Management Design Flaw Example

As a young web developer, I once designed a flawed session management scheme. It used consecutive integer numbers for session tokens, making session hijacking trivial (well, not quite, since some other attributes of my scheme prevented hijacking, but the story sounds better when I do not mention them). Here is what an attacker could have done:

  • Log in to get a current session token.

  • Decrease the number one by one to go through all active sessions.


Typical session token problems include:

  • Tokens are short and can be cycled through easily.

  • Sequential session tokens are used.

  • Token values start repeating quickly.

  • Token generation is based on other predictable information, such as an IP address or time of session creation.

10.1.6. Good Practices

To conclude the discussion about session management, here are some best practices to demonstrate that a robust scheme requires serious thinking:

  • Create a session token upon first visit.

  • When performing authentication, destroy the old session and create a new one.

  • Limit session lifetime to a short period (a few hours).

  • Destroy inactive sessions regularly.

  • Destroy sessions after users log out.

  • Ask users to re-authenticate before an important task is performed (e.g., an order is placed).

  • Do not use the same session for a non-SSL part of the site as for the SSL part of the site because non-SSL traffic can be intercepted and the session token obtained from it. Treat them as two different servers.

  • If cookies are used to transport session tokens in an SSL application, they should be marked "secure." Secure cookies are never sent over a non-SSL connection.

  • Regenerate session tokens from time to time.

  • Monitor client parameters (IP address, the User-Agent request header) and send warnings to the error log when they change. Some information (e.g., the contents of the User-Agent header) should not change for the lifetime of a session. Invalidate the session if it does.

  • If you know where your users are coming from, attach each session to a single IP address, and do not allow the address to change.

  • If you can, do not accept users coming through web proxies. This will be difficult to do for most public sites but easier for internal applications.

  • If you can, do not accept users coming through open web proxies. Open proxies are used when users want to stay anonymous or otherwise hide their tracks. You can detect which proxies are open by extracting the IP address of the proxy from each proxied request and having a script automatically test whether the proxy is open or not.

  • If you do allow web proxies, consider using Java applets or Flash movies (probably a better choice since such movies can pretend to be regular animations) to detect the users' real IP addresses. It's a long shot but may work in some cases.

An excellent overview of the problems of session management is available in the following paper:

"Web Based Session Management: Best practices in managing HTTP Based Client Sessions" by Gunter Ollmann (http://www.technicalinfo.net/papers/WebBasedSessionManagement.html)
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