Cybersecurity

Session cookies constitute one of the main attack targets against client authentication on the Web. To counter these attacks, modern web browsers implement native cookie protection mechanisms based on the HttpOnly and Secure flags. … Our analysis of the Alexa-ranked top 1000 popular websites gives clear evidence that such risks are far from remote, as the HttpOnly and Secure flags appear as yet to be largely ignored by web developers. – CookiExt: Patching the Browser Against Session Hijacking, Journal of Computer Security (2015).   Summary of Session-hijacking attacks When you login into a website, the web-server creates a “session” to identify your identity by sending the client browser a session cookie. Cookies have functions other than sessions, but perhaps the most important use of cookies from a security perspective managing your “state” or “session-state”. This is because a single IP address may have many clients connecting to the server, so…