Session Takeover Prevention

Sessions are how we interact with the web. Whenever your users interact with a site, a web application or a portal, a session is created — every session begins with a login and ends with termination. Bad actors want in on those sessions; if they can get into a session, they can pretend to be legitimate users, and they can also cause all kinds of damage. Using a variety of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP), threat actors who hijack sessions are able to steal money, data, credentials, and seed the ground for future attacks. Fortunately, threat intelligence is a critical tool in preventing session takeovers. 

How Flare Helps your Team Prevent Session Takeovers

How does Flare’s threat intelligence solution prevent session takeovers?

Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting session cookies because they offer a direct route to bypass authentication mechanisms, including multi-factor authentication. By combining these cookies with data from stealer logs and employing tools like anti-detect browsers and VPNs, attackers can initiate session takeovers effortlessly. Once in possession of a session cookie, they can maintain access to an account for the session’s duration, regardless of the account holder’s security precautions.

The Flare Account and Session Takeover solution steps up to the challenge by curating a premier dataset of compromised credentials and active session cookies. Through its API, organizations can harness this data to terminate active sessions, prevent fraud, and strengthen user protection. This solution effectively addresses the risk of stolen cookie sessions, offering a robust defense against a leading method for account takeovers.

What are the key benefits of Flare’s solution? 

• Continuous monitoring: Using an automated solution like Flare’s gives your team 24/7 coverage, so you will know as sensitive information appears in an unauthorized location.
• A proactive security stance: By actively seeking out potential threats, your team can catch leaks early, giving leadership and your team an opportunity to take steps to protect their data, systems, and networks.
• Unmatched data collection: Flare uses billions of data points to provide your team with information about your organization’s security stance, relevant threats, and the movement of threat actors between platforms. 
• Transparency: Flare lists every source so you can tell decision-makers exactly where your threat intelligence data is coming from. 

Session Takeover Prevention: An Overview

What are session takeovers? 

Also called session hijacking, or cookie stealing, session takeovers are a type of attack that occurs when threat actors steal access to a legitimate session, taking over the session and impersonating a valid user. Sessions can be hijacked in a variety of ways; a criminal might eavesdrop on traffic to steal a session token, use a stolen cookie, or use a stolen password. However the criminal gets into the session, the results can be serious. 

What information is included in a stealer log? 

Stealer logs are like kits containing everything a bad actor needs to hijack a session. Stealer logs often contain massive amounts of information, although different types of information stealers will steal different kinds of information such as 

• Autofills: The information often saved as autofill data in your browser, such as names, addresses, passwords, and payment details.
• Cookies: Saved session cookies which allow attackers to bypass authentication mechanisms and hijack active sessions, leading to account takeovers.
• Passwords: Passwords that have been harvested from the victim’s browser.
• Clipboard information: Copies of anything saved on the victim’s clipboard.
• System information: Data about the victim’s system, such as a list of browsers, software, file logs and operating system information. 

What are the two types of session takeovers? 

• Passive hijacking: Passive hijacking is like spying. In a passive hijacking attack, threat actors monitor the traffic between their prospective victim’s computer and a server. The goal is to collect and steal data. 
• Active hijacking: Active hijacking means the criminals are actively working to crash an authenticated session. They can then take action by pretending to be the victim. This can mean stealing data or taking part in further attacks. 

Why is it Especially Important to Prevent Session Takeovers Now? 

Why is session takeover prevention important in today’s cybersecurity landscape? 

Session takeovers are on the rise, driven by the widespread adoption of multi-factor authentication (MFA). Passwords are now more difficult to steal, but session takeovers give threat actors a way to bypass MFA controls, by harvesting session cookies and stealing session tokens. If an attacker steals an active session token after MFA authentication, they can bypass the MFA requirement, as the session is already authenticated, and hijack the session.

How can session takeovers be prevented? 

A variety of methods can be used to prevent session takeovers: 

• Password managers: When passwords are stored in a manager, not a browser, risk of password theft can be mitigated. 
• MFA: Multi-factor authentication adds another layer of security to devices and accounts. 
• Employee training: Users don’t always know about session takeovers. By providing training, your organization can raise awareness and secure user sessions. 
• Personal device policies: When personal devices come to work, this opens up new and potentially easier targets for bad actors to hijack sessions and get into corporate resources. 
• Threat intelligence: Continuous monitoring for stealer logs and other stolen information across the clear, deep, and dark web is a critical part of finding leaks and fixing vulnerabilities. 

Session Takeover Prevention and Flare

Flare provides the leading Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution for organizations. Our technology constantly scans the online world, including the clear & dark web, to discover unknown events, automatically prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security. Secure your cookies and sessions with Flare’s solution.

Our solution integrates into your security program in 30 minutes to provide your team with actionable intelligence and automated remediation for high-risk exposure. See it yourself with our free trial.