Session hijacking from another angle

Question

I have been working on a secure login/portal type set of tools, the general code is free from SQL injections, XSS etc, I have mulitple things in place to stop session hijacking.

1. regenerate session's ID for EVERY page
2. Compare the user's IP with the IP at login
3. compare the user's user_agent with the agent at login
4. have short session time outs

etc

I have done all I can think of to stop hijacking, however I have still located a situation where it might be possible and would like to know if anyone has any ideas.

Imagine a situation where you have 2 users behind a firewall which does SNAT/DNAT, so both apart to come from the same IP. They are both identical machines supplied by the same place. One connects to the site and logs in, the other copies the PHPSESSID cookie and can simply steal the session.

This might sound like an extreme example, however this is very similar to my place of work, everyone is behind a firewall so looks to be the same IP, and all machines are managed/supplied by the IT team, so all have the same version of browser, OS etc etc.

I am trying to think of another way (server side) to stop the hijacking or minimize it further, I was thinking of a token which gets embedded into every URL (changed for each page), and checked.

I am looking for ideas or suggestions, if you want to offer code or examples you're welcome, but I am more interested in out of the box ideas or comments on my token idea.

Answer 1

Force everything to use HTTPS.

I think you are referring to a passive attack where a user in the network sniffs the cookie. For that, you don't need HTTPS. There are several options that are sufficient when the parties are sure to whom they're talking (e.g. you could do a DH exchange first and the server would encrypt a token the client would use in the next request...), but it's not worth the trouble going down that route.

If the user initially types in a non-https address, an active attack is still possible, but there's nothing you can do in that case. In the future, you might prevent future attacks of this kind once the user establishes one unadulterated connection to your site through HTTP strict transport security..

Answer 2

I wrote the main login portal for a major branch of the U.S. military.

I did all you mentioned above, plus at least one more step:

Have you stored a cookie on first login w/ the SESSION salt? Then encrypt everything serverside using that salt. The crooks would have to know about THAT cookie and STEAL IT, and it dramatically reduces exposure to session hijacking, as they just aren't lokoing for it.

Also, use JS and AJAX to detect if they have flash installed and if they do, store a flash cookie, too, with another salt. At that point you can more or less assume you have some pretty dedicated attackers out there and there's not much more you can do (like sending your users GPG keys to use via javascript and make them sign every single bit of data they send to you).

Answer 3

Do not reinvent the wheal, the built in session handler for your platform is very secure.

There are a number of configuration for PHP's session handler. Use HTTPS, at no point can a session ID be transmitted over http "cookie_secure" does this, its a great feature but a terrible name. httponly cookies makes xss harder because javascript cannot access document.cookie. Use_only_cookies stops session fixation, because an attacker cannot influence this value on another domain (unless he has xss, but thats a moot point).

PHP configuration:

session.cookie_httponly=on
session.cookie_secure=on
session.use_only_cookies=on 

Answer 4

I am trying to think of another way (server side) to stop the hijacking or minimize it further, I was thinking of a token which gets embedded into every URL (changed for each page), and checked.

You should look at:

Understanding the Rails Authenticity Token

Tokens are a good idea.