Analyzing session management of Hexagon Corporation’s portal for staff to access corporate information remotely

Question

Task: Describe the threats to the business, the vulnerabilities that may be exploited and the potential impacts. Analyze the customer environment and session material. Report on any weaknesses found in your analysis that increase the likelihood or impact of an attack. Make recommendations for improving session management supported by industry literature.

Answer

Introduction

Session management is an essential component of web-based applications and is used to maintain the state of a user’s session during their interaction with the application. Without session management, a web application would not be able to recognize a user and provide them with the appropriate access to the application. Poor session management can lead to security vulnerabilities that allow malicious actors to access the application without authentication. This report has been conducted to assess the session management of Hexagon Corporation’s portal for staff to access corporate information remotely.

Overview of Session Management

Session management is a critical component of any web application, as it is responsible for validating users, authenticating their permissions, and keeping their data and sessions secure. It is an intricate process that involves three main steps: authentication, authorization, and session management (de AraujoZanella, da Silva &Albini,2020). Authentication is the process of verifying the user's identity, typically through a username and password. Authorization is the process of determining the user's access rights and privileges, such as which parts of the application they can access. Finally, session management is the process of managing the user's data and sessions. It involves creating, storing, and expiring sessions, as well as managing session tokens and other security measures.

In order to ensure successful session management, it is important to take several steps to keep the user's data secure. First, strong authentication and authorization measures should be implemented, such as using secure communication protocols, using strong passwords, and using two-factor authentication. Second, session expiration and session tokens should be utilized to ensure the security of user data (Díaz de León Guillén, Morales-Rocha&Fernández Martínez,2020). Third, access to the application should be restricted to authenticated and authorized users, and all user requests should be verified and authenticated. Finally, audit logs should be kept to track user activity and detect any suspicious activity.

Overall, successful session management is a complex process that requires a combination of security measures and procedures. In addition to implementing authentication and authorization measures, it is also important to utilize session expiration, session tokens, and audit logs to ensure the security of user data. By taking these steps, organizations can ensure that their web applications are secure and their user data is kept safe.

Threats

Without proper session management, an attacker can gain access to the application and potentially take over the user's account. This can lead to data leakage, privilege escalation, malicious code injection, and other exploits (Al Nafea&Almaiah, 2021). These types of attacks can have a severe impact on the business, including financial losses, reputational damage, legal liabilities, and more. There are several different threats to the business posed by inadequate session management. These include:

Unauthorized Access: Without adequate session management, an attacker can gain access to the system without authorization. This can lead to the attacker being able to view and modify sensitive data, as well as launch other attacks on the system.

Session Hijacking: An attacker can hijack an existing session and gain access to the system as if they were the legitimate user. This can be done by exploiting vulnerabilities in the session management system or by sniffing the network traffic.

Man-in-the-Middle Attacks: An attacker can intercept traffic between the application and the server, allowing them to view or modify data in transit. This can compromise the security of the application and the data it contains.

Brute Force Attacks: An attacker can use brute force attacks to guess the correct credentials and gain access to the application.

Session Fixation: An attacker can use session fixation attacks to gain access to the application by obtaining a valid session ID.

Vulnerabilities

There are several vulnerabilities that can be exploited to gain access to the application without proper session management (Humayunetval., 2020). These include:

Cross-site Scripting (XSS): XSS attacks involve injecting malicious scripts into web applications in order to gain access to user data.

Cross-site Request Forgery (CSRF): CSRF attacks are a form of attack that involves manipulating users into performing an action on the application without their knowledge.

Insecure Direct Object References (IDOR): IDOR attacks involve manipulating requests to the application in order to gain access to resources that the user does not have permission to access.

Session Hijacking: Session hijacking involves an attacker taking over a user's session and using it to gain access to the application.

Weak Authentication: Weak authentication is when an application does not use strong enough authentication methods to verify the user's identity.

Potential Impacts

The potential impacts of these threats are significant. If a session is hijacked, an attacker can gain access to the application without authentication and can perform any actions that the legitimate user can (Syed et al., 2022). This could include changing settings, viewing or modifying confidential data, or deleting data. Brute force attacks can also allow an attacker to gain access to the application, if they are able to guess the correct credentials.

Session fixation attacks can also be used to gain access to the application, if an attacker is able to obtain a valid session ID. These threats can have a severe impact on the business, including financial losses, reputational damage, legal liabilities, and more. If the user data is compromised, the business could be liable for any damages caused.

Analysis of Customer Environment and Session Material

Hexagon Corporation’s portal for staff to access corporate information remotely is built on a PHP platform. The session management system used is a standard PHP session system (Adamu, Hamzah&Rosli, 2020). The session ID is stored in a cookie on the user’s computer and is used to identify the user and maintain their session. The session ID is transmitted in the URL when the user requests a page from the application and is also included in the HTTP response headers (Desai et al., 2020). The analysis of the customer environment and session material has identified several potential security weaknesses. The session ID is stored in a cookie on the user’s computer, which makes it vulnerable to theft by malicious software. The session ID is transmitted in the URL and included in the HTTP response headers, which makes it susceptible to interception by an attacker. The session timeout is set to 30 minutes, which is considered too long for a web application. This increases the amount of time an attacker has to hijack a user’s session. The application does not have any measures in place to detect or prevent brute force attacks.

Recommendations

The following recommendations should be implemented to improve the security of Hexagon Corporation’s portal for staff to access corporate information remotely:

Implement a stronger authentication system: A stronger authentication system should be implemented to reduce the risk of brute force attacks. This could include the use of two-factor authentication or other methods of authentication such as biometric authentication.

Implement HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS): HSTS is a security feature that forces the browser to communicate with the server using secure HTTPS connections. This prevents attackers from intercepting the session ID in transit.

Shorten the session timeout: The session timeout should be set to a shorter duration, such as 15 minutes, to reduce the amount of time an attacker has to hijack a user’s session.

Implement session expiration: The application should be configured to expire a user’s session after a certain period of inactivity. This will ensure that a user’s session is terminated if they forget to log out.

Implement session tokens: Session tokens should be used to identify a user’s session. This will prevent attackers from stealing the session ID from a user’s cookie.

Implement access control lists (ACLs): ACLs should be used to control what resources a user has access to based on their permissions. This will help to prevent unauthorized access to resources.

Implement audit logging: Audit logs should be used to track user activity on the application and detect any suspicious activity. This will help to identify potential security vulnerabilities and breaches.

Use secure communication protocols: Secure communication protocols such as SSL/TLS should be used to encrypt communications between the application and the server. This will prevent attackers from intercepting the session ID in transit.

Perform regular security scans: Regular security scans should be performed to identify any potential security vulnerabilities in the application. This will help to ensure that the application is secure from potential threats.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the analysis of the customer environment and session material has identified several potential security weaknesses in Hexagon Corporation’s portal for staff to access corporate information remotely. These weaknesses increase the likelihood of an attacker gaining access to the application without authentication. The above recommendations should be implemented to improve the security of the application and reduce the risk of an attack. Implementing these measures will help to ensure that the application is secure from potential threats and provide a safe and secure environment for users to access corporate information.

References

Adamu, J., Hamzah, R., &Rosli, M. M. (2020). Security issues and framework of electronic medical record: A review. Bulletin of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, 9(2), 565-572. https://www.beei.org/index.php/EEI/article/viewFile/2064/1400

Al Nafea, R., &Almaiah, M. A. (2021, July). Cyber security threats in cloud: Literature review. In 2021 International Conference on Information Technology (ICIT) (pp. 779-786). IEEE. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mohammed-Almaiah/publication/353488826_Cyber_Security_Threats_in_Cloud_Literature_Review/links/61dd6adf4e4aff4a643475c6/Cyber-Security-Threats-in-Cloud-Literature-Review.pdf

de AraujoZanella, A. R., da Silva, E., &Albini, L. C. P. (2020). Security challenges to smart agriculture: Current state, key issues, and future directions. Array, 8, 100048. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590005620300333

Desai, B. C., Kipling, A. L., Navale, R., & Zhu, J. (2020, August). The web: a hacker's heaven and an on-line system. In Proceedings of the 24th Symposium on International Database Engineering & Applications (pp. 1-7). https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3410566.3410589

Díaz de León Guillén, M. Á., Morales-Rocha, V., & Fernández Martínez, L. F. (2020). A systematic review of security threats and countermeasures in SaaS. Journal of Computer Security, 28(6), 635-653. https://www.academia.edu/download/81188690/JCS200002.pdf

Humayun, M., Niazi, M., Jhanjhi, N. Z., Alshayeb, M., & Mahmood, S. (2020). Cyber security threats and vulnerabilities: a systematic mapping study. Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering, 45(4), 3171-3189. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13369-019-04319-2

Syed, N. F., Shah, S. W., Trujillo-Rasua, R., & Doss, R. (2022). Traceability in supply chains: A Cyber security analysis. Computers & Security, 112, 102536. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167404821003606