| This requirement focuses on communications protection at the application session, versus network packet level. The intent of this control is to establish grounds for confidence at each end of a communications session in the ongoing identity of the other party and in the validity of the information being transmitted. Unique session IDs are the opposite of sequentially generated session IDs which can be easily guessed by an attacker. Unique session identifiers help to reduce predictability of said identifiers. Unique session IDs address man-in-the-middle attacks including session hijacking or insertion of false information into a session. If the attacker is unable to identify or guess the session information related to pending application traffic, they will have more difficulty in hijacking the session or otherwise manipulating valid sessions. Organizations can define the randomness of unique session identifiers when deemed necessary (e.g., sessions in service-oriented architectures providing web-based services).
Rationale for non-applicability:
Session identifiers are relevant for multi-user applications, typically involving network communication. The MAPP SRG covers single-user applications only. Even in the rare case in which a single user may have several sessions within the context of a single-user application, there is no risk of external breach of any of these sessions because they are all accessed locally. If a remote application to which the mobile application connects employs session identifiers, it is the responsibility of the remote application to enforce randomness requirements. |
