Evaluating the quality of session identifiers with Burp Sequencer
Burp Suite's Sequencer requests thousands of session identifiers from the server (by repeating the login request, for example) and analyzes the responses to determine the randomness and cryptographic strength of the algorithm generating the identifiers. The stronger the algorithm, the harder for an attacker to replicate a valid ID.
In this recipe, we will use Burp Sequencer to analyze the session ID generation by two different applications and determine some characteristics of a secure session ID generation algorithm.
Getting ready
We will use WebGoat and RailsGoat (a WebGoat version made with the Ruby on Rails framework). Both applications are available in the vulnerable VM (vm_1
).
You will need to create a user in RailsGoat; to do that, use the s
ignup
button on the main page.
How to do it...
We will start analyzing RailsGoat's session cookie. We could have used any PHPSESSID
or JSESSIONID
cookie, but we will take advantage of...