CAPEC Details
Name Cross Site Identification
Likelyhood of attack Typical severity
High Low
Summary An attacker harvests identifying information about a victim via an active session that the victim's browser has with a social networking site. A victim may have the social networking site open in one tab or perhaps is simply using the "remember me" feature to keep their session with the social networking site active. An attacker induces a payload to execute in the victim's browser that transparently to the victim initiates a request to the social networking site (e.g., via available social network site APIs) to retrieve identifying information about a victim. While some of this information may be public, the attacker is able to harvest this information in context and may use it for further attacks on the user (e.g., spear phishing).
Prerequisites The victim has an active session with the social networking site.
Solutions Usage: Users should always explicitly log out from the social networking sites when done using them. Usage: Users should not open other tabs in the browser when using a social networking site.
Related Weaknesses
CWE ID Description
CWE-352 Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CWE-359 Exposure of Private Personal Information to an Unauthorized Actor
Related CAPECS
CAPEC ID Description
CAPEC-62 An attacker crafts malicious web links and distributes them (via web pages, email, etc.), typically in a targeted manner, hoping to induce users to click on the link and execute the malicious action against some third-party application. If successful, the action embedded in the malicious link will be processed and accepted by the targeted application with the users' privilege level. This type of attack leverages the persistence and implicit trust placed in user session cookies by many web applications today. In such an architecture, once the user authenticates to an application and a session cookie is created on the user's system, all following transactions for that session are authenticated using that cookie including potential actions initiated by an attacker and simply "riding" the existing session cookie.