Preventing session hijacking in collaborative applications with hybrid cache-supported one-way hash chains

Session hijacking attacks of social network websites are one of the commonly experienced cyber threats in today’s Internet especially with the unprecedented proliferation of wireless networks and mobile applications. To address this problem, we propose a cache supported hybrid two-dimensional one-way hash construction to handle social networks’ user sessions authentication in collaborative applications efficiently. The solution, which presents a major redesign from [18], is based on utilizing two-dimensional OHC chains equipped with sparse caching capabilities to carry out authentication during social networks users’ sessions. We analyze the proposed hybrid scheme mathematically to determine the cost of authentication and develop a quartic equation to check the optimal configuration of the two dimensions. We also evaluate the hybrid scheme with simulation experiments of different configurations and scenarios. The results of the simulation experiments show that the hybrid scheme improves performance of the OHC tremendously while efficiently and securely handling authentication.