Hackers Beware

Detailed Description of Session Hijacking

Let’s take a closer look at exactly what has to happen to hijack a session. The following are the main steps that must be taken to perform an active session hijack, where the goal is to take over an existing session:

1. Find a target.

2. Perform sequence prediction.

3. Find an active session.

4. Guess the sequence numbers.

5. Take one of the parties offline.

6. Take over the session.

Find a Target

This might seem obvious, but to hijack a session, the attacker must find a suitable target. There are some key points he observes when searching for a suitable target. First, he usually wants the target to be a server that allows session-oriented connections like telnet and FTP. Also, from a firewall standpoint, the attacker probably ...