Insufficient Session-ID Length
Description
Session identifiers should be at least 128 bits long to prevent brute-force session guessing attacks.
The WebLogic deployment descriptor should specify a session identifier length of at least 128 bits. A shorter session identifier leaves the application open to brute-force session guessing attacks. If an attacker can guess an authenticated user’s session identifier, they can take over the user’s session. The remainder of this explanation will detail a back-of-the-envelope justification for a 128 bit session identifier.
The expected number of seconds required to guess a valid session identifier is given by the equation:
Where:
- B is the number of bits of entropy in the session identifier
- A is the number of guesses an attacker can try each second
- S is the number of valid session identifiers that are valid and available to be guessed at any given time
The number of bits of entropy in an ASCII-encoded session identifier is always less than the actual size of the identifier. If we assume that session identifiers are being generated using a good source of random numbers, and that the common (but inefficient) hexadecimal encoding method is used, then we can fit 4 bits of entropy into each byte/character (hexadecimal is 50% efficient). This leads us to estimate the number of bits of entropy in a session identifier to be half the size of the identifier’s representation. A 128bit/16byte identifier may contain just 64bits of actual entropy.
If attackers use a botnet with hundreds or thousands of drone computers, it is reasonable to assume that they could attempt tens of thousands of guesses per second. If the web site in question is large and popular, a high volume of guessing might go unnoticed for some time.
A lower bound on the number of valid session identifiers that are available to be guessed is the number of users that are active on a site at any given moment. However, any users that abandon their sessions without logging out will increase this number. (This is one of many good reasons to have a short inactive session timeout.)
With a 64 bit session identifier, assume 32 bits of entropy. For a large web site, assume that the attacker can try 1,000 guesses per second and that there are 10,000 valid session identifiers at any given moment. Given these assumptions, the expected time for an attacker to successfully guess a valid session identifier is about 7 minutes. (32bit = 4294967296 / 10.000 = 429496. At 1000 attempts per second that is 429 seconds or 7.15 minutes.)
Now assume a 128 bit session identifier that provides 64 bits of entropy. With a very large web site, an attacker might try 10,000 guesses per second with 100,000 valid session identifiers available to be guessed. Given these assumptions, the expected time for an attacker to successfully guess a valid session identifier is greater than 292 years.
Risk Factors
- Attackers that are try to obtain a valid session ID for Session hijacking.