CWE-6: J2EE Misconfiguration: Insufficient Session-ID Length

Description

The J2EE application is configured to use an insufficient session ID length.

Submission Date :

July 19, 2006, midnight

Modification Date :

2023-06-29 00:00:00+00:00

Organization :

MITRE

Extended Description

If an attacker can guess or steal a session ID, then they may be able to take over the user's session (called session hijacking). The number of possible session IDs increases with increased session ID length, making it more difficult to guess or steal a session ID.

Example Vulnerable Codes

Example - 1

The following XML example code is a deployment descriptor for a Java web application deployed on a Sun Java Application Server. This deployment descriptor includes a session configuration property for configuring the session ID length.


<description>The number of bytes in this web module's session ID.</description><property name="idLengthBytes" value="8"></property><session-properties></session-properties>
...<session-config></session-config>...<sun-web-app></sun-web-app>

This deployment descriptor has set the session ID length for this Java web application to 8 bytes (or 64 bits). The session ID length for Java web applications should be set to 16 bytes (128 bits) to prevent attackers from guessing and/or stealing a session ID and taking over a user's session.

Note for most application servers including the Sun Java Application Server the session ID length is by default set to 128 bits and should not be changed. And for many application servers the session ID length cannot be changed from this default setting. Check your application server documentation for the session ID length default setting and configuration options to ensure that the session ID length is set to 128 bits.

Related Weaknesses

This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined to give an overview of the different insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction.

CWE-334: Small Space of Random Values

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