Strong passwords and MFA are critical—but they only protect the login. What happens after a user is authenticated? If your application doesn’t protect sessions properly, attackers can hijack them and bypass authentication altogether.
Session hijacking is when an attacker takes control of an active session between a user and an application. This is typically done by stealing or intercepting the session token—a unique identifier that tells the system the user is already logged in.
If an attacker gets hold of that token, they can impersonate the user without ever knowing their credentials.
Man-in-the-Middle (MITM): Intercepting tokens over unsecured connections (e.g. public Wi-Fi).
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): Injecting scripts that steal session cookies.
Session fixation: Forcing a known session ID onto a user to gain later access.
Insecure token storage: Tokens saved in localStorage or passed in URLs.
These attacks often go unnoticed—because to the application, everything looks normal.
Use HTTPS everywhere—not just on login pages.
Set session cookies as HttpOnly and Secure to prevent client-side access and transmission over HTTP.
Rotate session tokens after login and privilege changes.
Implement session timeouts and reauthentication for sensitive actions.
Monitor for anomalies, like concurrent logins from different geolocations.
Stay ahead of the Wave!