CAPEC-593
Session Hijacking
This type of attack involves an adversary that exploits weaknesses in an application's use of sessions in performing authentication. The adversary is able to steal or manipulate an active session and use it to gain unathorized access to the application.
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Explain the attack pattern CAPEC-593: Session Hijacking: how it unfolds, what it needs and how to prevent and detect it in my systems. Use https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/593.html and https://cve.bz/cve/capec/593?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.
How the attack unfolds
Explore
The attacker looks for a way in.
[Discover Existing Session Token] Through varrying means, an adversary will discover and store an existing session token for some other authenticated user session.
Experiment
They probe what they found.
[Insert Found Session Token] The attacker attempts to insert a found session token into communication with the targeted application to confirm viability for exploitation.
Exploit
They carry out the attack.
[Session Token Exploitation] The attacker leverages the captured session token to interact with the targeted application in a malicious fashion, impersonating the victim.
Prerequisites
An application that leverages sessions to perform authentication.
Skills required
- Low skill
Exploiting a poorly protected identity token is a well understood attack with many helpful resources available.
Resources required
The adversary must have the ability to communicate with the application over the network.
Consequences
| Impact | Affects | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Gain Privileges | Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability | A successful attack can enable an adversary to gain unauthorized access to an application. |
Mitigations
Properly encrypt and sign identity tokens in transit, and use industry standard session key generation mechanisms that utilize high amount of entropy to generate the session key. Many standard web and application servers will perform this task on your behalf. Utilize a session timeout for all sessions. If the user does not explicitly logout, terminate their session after this period of inactivity. If the user logs back in then a new session key should be generated.
Weaknesses it exploits
- CWE-287 Improper Authentication
Recent CVEs with these weaknesses
- –CVE-2026-97874
When Hessian remoting is configured with BASIC authentication, the authentication check is not applied to Hessian endpoints of applications deployed under a non-root context path. A remote unauthenticated attacker can invoke the exposed EJ…
- –CVE-2026-97880
The embedded OpenEJB HTTP server dispatches some requests to REST endpoints configured for HTTP Basic authentication without verifying credentials. A remote unauthenticated attacker can invoke protected resources, bypassing authentication.…
- –CVE-2026-111240
The JDBC based JAAS login module accepts a login without a password for accounts whose stored password is NULL. A remote attacker who knows the user name of such an account can authenticate as that user and obtain its roles. Only deploymen…
- –CVE-2026-111250
The embedded OpenEJB HTTP server reports every request as authenticated when an application requests authentication programmatically. A remote unauthenticated attacker can access functionality protected this way. Only applications served b…
- –CVE-2026-111261
The Jakarta Security LDAP identity store accepts an empty password as valid if the directory server allows unauthenticated binds, which some directory servers do by default. A remote attacker can then authenticate as any existing user with…
- 7.4CVE-2026-120999
Improper Authentication vulnerability in Google sign-in and email confirmation in nerves-hub nerves_hub_web allows an attacker who registers another person's email address to share that person's account once they sign in. NervesHub.Account…
- 8.1CVE-2026-76877
The WPML Multilingual CMS plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Authentication Bypass via Race Condition in versions up to, and including, 4.9.7. This is due to the `process_iframe_request` function's language-per-domain SSO handler genera…
- 5.5CVE-2026-125087
A vulnerability was found in Michael-A-Kuykendall Shimmy up to 2.6.4. The affected element is an unknown function of the file src/server.rs of the component Inference API. Performing a manipulation results in missing authentication. The at…
The newest records naming one of them. Each weakness's page lists them all.
Related attack patterns
- Part of
- CAPEC-21 Exploitation of Trusted Identifiers
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