Lecture6 Broken Authentication/ Session Mgmt

Question 1

Broken Authentication and Session

Management. What is it?

Answer 1

• Vulnerability that allows an attacker to capture credentials or bypass authentication methods used to protect against unauthorised access.
• Approx 23 % of all Web Apps are vulnerable
• currently ranked #2 on the OWASP Top 10

Question 2

How does the application fail to
protect username, password and
session ID?

Answer 2

1. Unencrypted connections to application.
2. Predictable login credentials.
3. Authentication details (username and
   password) not protected when stored.
4. Session IDs are used in URLs
5. Session values not timed out or don’t get
   invalidated after logout.

Question 3

To defend against session fixation, assign …..

Answer 3

assign session cookie immediately after authentication, and also verify they do not include the cookie value in the URL

Question 4

Active eavesdropping

Answer 4

somebody sets up fake wifi router

Question 5

Passive disclosure

Answer 5

info. that is being sent from a browser (e.g. as GET request) and then the attacker sniffs the network traffic and gains access to that info

Question 6

Most common authentication scheme

Answer 6

the use of a username and password