SESSION MANUPLATING FOR WHITE HAT HACK

SESSION SIDEJACKING

• What is Sidejacking ?

Sidejacking is the process of sniffing cookie information, then replaying them against websites in order to clone a victim’s session. We use the term sidejacking to distinguish this technique from man-in-the-middle hijacking. Whereas man-in-the-middle hijacking interferes with the original session, sidejacking does not. The victim continues to use his session blissfully unaware that we are also in his account.

SideJacking works only if the site catches a non-SSL cookie, so any Web site that uses SSL exclusively would be safe from SideJackers. SideJacking was first demonstrated by Robert Graham, CEO of Errata Security at Black Hat in 2007.

• Techniques :

All you need to do in order to sidejack is sniff cookies off the wire and edit cookies. This can be done with a wide variety of tools.

1. WinPcap is the industry-standard tool for link-layer network access in Windows environments: it allows applications to capture and transmit network packets bypassing the protocol stack, and has additional useful features, including kernel-level packet filtering, a network statistics engine and support for remote packet capture.

Download and install Winpcap from here.

2. Graham leveraged the tools Ferret, essentially a packet sniffing tool that captures cookies and writes them to a hamster.txt file, and Hamster, basically a local proxy that creates a web front end for exploiting the cookie information captured by Ferret.

Download and install Ferret ----Hamster from here.

3. Unzip the tools into a directory such as C:\sidejacking.

4. Open a command prompt and change to that directory as cd c:\sidejacking.

5. Use ferret –W to figure out which interface you want to sniff.

6. Use ferret –i n to start sniffing cookies. Here n is the interface number.

7. Now use hamster in the same directory as hamster.txt to start the proxy.

8. Set up a browser to use the proxy at 127.0.0.1:3128.

9. In that browser, go to http://hamster to go to the proxy console window.

10. Select a victim, then click on a URL to sidejack it.

• Countermeasures :

1. Always try to stick to secured WiFi networks that you know and trust that would not have any strangers on it running packet sniffers.

2. Never use a Wi-Fi hotspot unless they are using VPN (virtual private networking) or SSL (secure sockets layer) to access sensitive information.

3. Graham said that Google Mail users could switch to https://mail.google.com and secure their session from such snooping.

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SESSION HIJACKING

• What is Session Hijacking ?

Session hijacking is the act of taking control of a user session after successfully obtaining or generating an authentication session ID. Session hijacking involves an attacker using captured, brute forced or reverse-engineered session IDs to seize control of a legitimate user's Web application session while that session is still in progress.

TCP session hijacking is when a hacker takes over a TCP session between two machines. Since most authentication only occurs at the start of a TCP session, this allows the hacker to gain access to a machine.

• Techniques :

There are mainly three methods used to perpetrate a session hijack. These are:

1. Session Fixation:

The session fixation attack is a class of Session Hijacking, which steals the established session between the client and the Web Server after the user logs in. Instead, the Session Fixation attack fixes an established session on the victim's browser, so the attack starts before the user logs in.


For detailed info on How Session Fixation works click here.

2. Session Sidejacking:

where the attacker uses packet sniffing to read network traffic between two parties to steal the session cookie. Many web sites use SSL encryption for login pages to prevent attackers from seeing the password, but do not use encryption for the rest of the site once authenticated. This allows attackers that can read the network traffic to intercept all the data that is submitted to the server or web pages viewed by the client.

1. First the attacker uses a network sniffer to capture a valid token session called Session ID.

2. Now he manipulates the token session to gain unauthorized access to the Web Server or hijack the victim's web session.



For detailed info on How Session Sidejacking works click here.

3. Cross-Site Scripting:

The attacker can compromise the session token by using malicious code or programs running at the client-side. If an attacker sends a crafted link to the victim with the malicious JavaScript, when the victim clicks on the link, the JavaScript will run and complete the instructions made by the attacker. The example shows how the attacker could use an XSS attack to steal the session token.


For detailed info on How XSS works click here.

• Protection :

1. Regenerating the session id after a successful login. This prevents session fixation because the attacker does not know the session id of the user after he has logged in.

2. Some services make secondary checks against the identity of the user. For example it will change the value of the cookie with each and every request.

3. Users may also wish to log out of websites whenever they are finished using them.

4. Encryption of the data passed between the parties; in particular the session key. This technique is widely relied-upon by web-based banks and other e-commerce services.




Happy Hacking...Enjoy...

For educational purpose only...Do not misuse it...

Source -::- xtrmhack 1,2