What is Session Hijacking?
Session hijacking is a cybersecurity vulnerability where hackers maliciously take control of a user’s web session. It is also known as cookie hijacking and primarily focuses on manipulating the victim’s session token to gain unauthorized access to personal data.
Some of the common practices through which hackers can hijack your sessions include bill payment, online shopping, etc. This attack occurs when there’s active communication between two networks.
Different Types of Session Hijacking
If you want to prevent your system from session hijacking, you need to be aware of various forms of attacks. Here are a few of the common types of session hijacking.
- Session Fixation
- Cross-site Scripting
- Man-in-the-browser Attack
In this attack, the hacker creates a session ID and tricks the user into starting a session with the same. This can be done through an email, leading to the hacker gaining full control over the session as soon as the user logs in.
Cross-site is one of the most popular cybersecurity attacks in which the hacker takes advantage of the security weak spots in a web server. They inject malicious scripts into the web pages, which allows them to carry out session theft on the user’s site easily.
As the name suggests, this attack is quite similar to a man-in-the-middle attack. However, in this case, the victim’s computer needs to be infected by a Trojan virus. This malware can modify transaction information and add new transactions without the user knowing.
Impact of Session Hijacking Attacks
Go through some of the major consequences of a session hijacking attack.
- Identity Theft
- Financial Fraud
- Reputation Damage
Since in a session hijacking attack, the hacker can get full access to the user’s personal information, they can easily steal the victim’s identity to commit further crimes.
Once the hacker gets access to the victim’s session, they can carry out financial transactions. Besides, they could make purchases or transfer money into a bank account.
If a hacker carries out a successful session hijacking attack on your system, you could lose your credibility in the market as it would severely damage your company’s reputation.
Session Hijacking Prevention Techniques
With the increasing number of cyber-attacks like session hijacking, familiarizing yourself with effective prevention techniques is necessary. Check out some of these below.
- Avoid Public Networks
- Secure Your Cookies
- Get VPN
- Up-to-date Software Security
Never rely on public Wi-Fi networks while carrying out online transactions or logging in to your email or social media accounts. This could lead to a significant threat of session hijacking by cybercriminals nearby waiting for their victims to make such mistakes.
Another great way to prevent cookie hijacking attacks is to secure your website’s cookies. Use secure flags to prevent your cookies from being accessed by unauthorized users and ensure that your cookies are only sent over a secure HTTP network.
If you happen to use a public wi-fi network in any case, make sure you employ a virtual private network (VPN). By doing so, you can hide your IP address and maintain your data confidentiality, establishing high security regardless of which wi-fi network you use.
No matter whether you have identified a session hijacking attack or not, make sure you install the latest and most reliable security software. You must also update your software regularly so that you can protect your system from cyberattacks at all times.