Stealing Tokens

Authentication tokens represent a valuable target for attackers who have established initial access within an application's environment and seek to expand their control through credential access. During the Expanding Control phase, attackers specifically target memory, files, or storage locations to extract authentication tokens such as session cookies, OAuth tokens, JSON Web Tokens (JWTs), or API keys that grant access to protected resources or elevated privileges. Compared to password theft, token stealing is often preferred as it bypasses multi-factor authentication requirements and leaves minimal forensic evidence. Attackers commonly employ techniques such as memory scraping, injection attacks like XSS, examining client-side storage (localStorage/sessionStorage), intercepting network traffic, or exploiting token leakage in logs and caches. Once acquired, these tokens can be immediately leveraged to impersonate legitimate users, access restricted application features, make unauthorized API calls, or pivot to connected services—all while operating under the identity context of the compromised user and potentially bypassing standard detection mechanisms that focus on authentication anomalies.