CAPEC-226
Session Credential Falsification through Manipulation
An attacker manipulates an existing credential in order to gain access to a target application. Session credentials allow users to identify themselves to a service after an initial authentication without needing to resend the authentication information (usually a username and password) with every message. An attacker may be able to manipulate a credential sniffed from an existing connection in order to gain access to a target server.
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For example, a credential in the form of a web cookie might have a field that indicates the access rights of a user. By manually tweaking this cookie, a user might be able to increase their access rights to the server. Alternately an attacker may be able to manipulate an existing credential to appear as a different user. This attack differs from falsification through prediction in that the user bases their modified credentials off existing credentials instead of using patterns detected in prior credentials to create a new credential that is accepted because it fits the pattern. As a result, an attacker may be able to impersonate other users or elevate their permissions to a targeted service.
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Explain the attack pattern CAPEC-226: Session Credential Falsification through Manipulation: how it unfolds, what it needs and how to prevent and detect it in my systems. Use https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/226.html and https://cve.bz/cve/capec/226?via=ask-ai-copy, which lists recent CVEs with the weaknesses it exploits. Cite the sources.Opens a third-party assistant; its answer is its own, not cve.bz's. The prompt holds only this attack pattern's id and public links.
Prerequisites
The targeted application must use session credentials to identify legitimate users.
Resources required
An attacker will need tools to sniff existing credentials (possibly their own) in order to retrieve a base credential for modification. They will need to understand how the components of the credential affect server behavior and how to manipulate this behavior by changing the credential. Finally, they will need tools to allow them to craft and transmit a modified credential.
Weaknesses it exploits
- CWE-472 External Control of Assumed-Immutable Web Parameter
- CWE-565 Reliance on Cookies without Validation and Integrity Checking
Recent CVEs with these weaknesses
- 3.7CVE-2026-123319
In JetBrains Ktor before 3.6.1 missing Domain attribute validation in client cookie storage allowed cookie injection
- 9.1CVE-2026-119128
ZITADEL 4.0.0 before 4.19.5 contains an authentication bypass vulnerability in the Login V2 UI that allows unauthenticated attackers to set the first credential of users lacking any authentication method. Attackers can compute a valid veri…
- 6.5CVE-2026-118661
Happy DOM is a JavaScript implementation of a web browser without its graphical user interface. Prior to 20.14.6, Happy DOM's CookieContainer in src/cookie/CookieContainer.ts does not correctly validate or match Domain cookie attributes. I…
- 9.1CVE-2026-112352
Sunhillo SureLine before 9.1.5 contains an authentication bypass vulnerability that allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to impersonate any user with an active web session by forging a session cookie containing only a cleartext userna…
- 7.1CVE-2026-115450
External Control of Assumed-Immutable Web Parameter (CWE-472) in the cart and checkout flow of MarcosCamara01 Ecommerce Template allows an authenticated user with no special privileges to be charged the price of one product while placing a…
- 2.3CVE-2026-111749
AIOHTTP is an asynchronous HTTP client/server framework for asyncio and Python. Prior to 3.14.4, Host-Only scope on an existing parent-domain cookie can be removed by a subdomain. A user who accesses an untrusted subdomain can consequently…
- 7.1CVE-2026-16453
Mattermost versions 11.10.x <= 11.10.0, 11.7.x <= 11.7.9, 11.9.x <= 11.9.1, 11.8.x <= 11.8.5 fail to verify the integrity of the SAML RelayState POST parameter which allows an authenticated SAML user to join any team, including invite-only…
- 8.1CVE-2026-111447
Wheels 1.1 through 4.1.2 resolves nestedProperties() records by posted primary key without checking that they belong to the parent being saved. A user able to submit a nested form for their own parent can update and reassign another parent…
The newest records naming one of them. Each weakness's page lists them all.
Related attack patterns
- Part of
- CAPEC-196 Session Credential Falsification through Forging
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