Check Your Exposure

USE CASE: SESSION HIJACKING PREVENTION

Stop Session Hijacking
at the Earliest Point of Exposure

Infostealer malware silently steals web session cookies, rendering MFA and passkeys useless. SpyCloud detects stolen session cookies tied to your customers or employees so you can terminate active sessions before attackers compromise them.

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session-hijacking

What criminals don't want you to know...

The next generation of ATO is here, and enterprises not only need to keep up with speed of criminal innovation, but find ways to preemptively prevent it.
Anti-detection tools work
Importing valid authentication cookies + device and browser details into an anti-detect browser perfectly emulates an authenticated session and bypasses all security controls – even passkeys
MFA is not enough
Without an attempted login, criminals aren’t prompted with MFA – they are able to bypass authentication entirely and gain access to accounts without setting off red flags
Cookies = credentials
Criminals value active stolen sessions as much, if not more, than credentials – acting with stealth and speed before the session exposures, and often before a user finds out they’re infected

Stop session hijacking before it escalates

SpyCloud closes the blind spot left by traditional security tools by revealing when users’ active sessions are already in criminal hands – and helping you shut them down in time.

Get a demo to see how session hijacking prevention works
Prevent MFA bypass
Detect cookies stolen by infostealers before they’re used for unauthorized session access
Preserve SSO security
Discover when cookies for critical workforce services like SSO are stolen from employees’ infected personal or managed devices
Lock out bad actors

Invalidate session tokens and stop session-based ATO and ransomware threats in their tracks

EXPLORE PRODUCTS

Prevent criminals from abusing employee and customer cookies for illegitimate access

Employee Session Identity Protection

Stop criminals from using stolen session cookies to bypass MFA and impersonate employees in workforce SSO, email, and collaboration tools

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Consumer Session Identity Protection

Get early warning and detect compromised web sessions tied to customer logins before fraud or ATO occurs

 
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Malware Exposure Remediation

Correlate session exposure with malware infections and take swift action to reset credentials and revoke tokens

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With Session Identity Protection, we’re protecting our customers as proactively as possible in today’s threat landscape. SpyCloud gives us the speed we need to act fast – before an attacker has the chance to abuse stolen cookies. The impact has been huge for us.
Niels Heijmans, Principal Security Intelligence Analyst | Atlassian
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SpyCloud is the trusted partner for security leaders, practitioners, and service providers across every industry in the global fight to defeat cybercrime.

Fraud PREVENTION

Protect customers and prevent session-based ATO and financial fraud

SECOPS & Incident response

Accelerate infostealer malware response with alerts based on real session compromise signals

CISOs

Build next-generation ATO prevention into your identity protection plans

Next steps

Take control of session hijacking before it escalates

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Session Hijacking Prevention FAQs
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SpyCloud offers identity threat protection solutions that help businesses prevent, remediate, and investigate cybercrime.

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Session Hijacking Prevention FAQs

Session hijacking occurs when a user’s web session is taken over by an attacker. When you log into a site or application, the server sets a temporary session cookie in your browser. This lets the application remember that you’re logged in and authenticated. Some cookies may last only 24-48 hours, while others last for months. With a valid stolen cookies and an anti-detect browser that emulates the infected system, a bad actor can perpetrate session hijacking – bypassing the need for a password, passkey, or MFA – without setting off any red flags.

Session hijacking is an increasingly prevalent precursor to fraud, and even more frightening to the enterprise, ransomware attacks.

Infostealer malware is the culprit. The first step is either by deploying malware directly onto a user’s device, or by buying or trading botnet logs on the darknet. Infostealer malware exfiltrates all manner of data from the infected device, including credentials, autofill info, and web session and authentication cookies without the user being aware of the infection. The criminal can then use a stolen session cookie to authenticate as the user – bypassing security and fraud controls including MFA.

Session hijacking is a form of targeted account takeover, and an easy way for criminals to launch a ransomware attack from inside the corporate network or a critical workforce service (including SSO). Once criminals have access to corporate applications, they can easily move laterally throughout the organization disguised as a legitimate user and attempt to escalate privileges in order to access valuable company data.

An employee with poor cyber habits who clicks on a malicious link or downloads a suspicious document and gets infected with an infostealer – aka an unwitting insider threat – is one of the most exploitable entry points for ransomware.

SpyCloud’s recent survey of more than 300 security leaders revealed that major ransomware attacks in the last two years have heightened malware concerns, causing organizations to further bolster their security framework with additional layers. Solutions that have not been highly considered before, such as monitoring for compromised web sessions, are now among the top countermeasures planned for investment. This suggests that organizations are looking to extend protection to other areas as threat actors, confronted with the more traditional defenses, shift their focus to other vulnerabilities that are less often or less thoroughly protected.

For enterprises, the best way to prevent session hijacking is by understanding what it is and how it’s executed, monitoring for stolen web sessions programmatically, and developing a process to invalidate web sessions related to infected users. Reacting quickly ensures criminals stay locked out and prevents them from reaping the benefits of malicious activity.

Since web sessions can be valid for a couple of days or even a couple of months, having early insights about malware-compromised sessions can help organizations act quickly to thwart session hijacking.

Yes. With a valid authentication cookie and an anti-detect browser, a criminal can masquerade as a legitimate user no matter what authentication method you have in place. Simply put, session hijacking renders passkeys, passwords, and even MFA irrelevant. We cover the issue in depth in this blog article.