Cookies: What they are for, associated risks, and what session hijacking has to do with it


When you visit almost any website, you’ll see a pop-up asking you to accept, decline, or customize the cookies it collects. Sometimes, it just tells you that cookies are in use by default.

Kaspersky researchers randomly checked 647 websites, and 563 of them displayed cookie notifications. Most of the time, users don’t even pause to think about what’s really behind the banner asking them to accept or decline cookies. We owe cookie warnings to the adoption of new laws and regulations, such as GDPR, that govern the collection of user information and protection of personal data. By adjusting your cookie settings, you can minimize the amount of information collected about your online activity. For example, you can decline to collect and store third-party cookies.

Read more…
Source: Kaspersky


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Google patches two Chrome zero-days under active attack

    March 13, 2026

    Update March 16, 2026 Earlier this week, Google incorrectly reported that an actively exploited vulnerability in Chrome had been fixed, and has now announced it will roll out a new update to protect users against the vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-3909. Original content: Google has released an out-of-band security update for Chrome desktop that patches two high‑severity ...

  • Swedish government IT system hacked

    March 13, 2026

    A large amount of sensitive information allegedly coming from a Swedish government IT system has been posted on the darknet, according to Dagens Nyheter and Expressen. DN writes that the newspaper has taken note of the leak and that it appears to contain the source code for a digital identity management system used by several authorities. ...

  • Poland investigates Iran links behind cyberattack on nuclear facility

    March 12, 2026

    Poland is looking into whether an attempted cyberattack on a nuclear research facility was carried out by Iran, the government said on Thursday. The country’s digital minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said in an emailed statement that Poland had “identified an attempted cyberattack on the servers of the National Centre for Nuclear Research,” which authorities had thwarted. He ...

  • Telus probes cybersecurity incident that ‘ShinyHunters’ group claims responsibility for

    March 12, 2026

    Canadian telecommunications and business services firm Telus is investigating a cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized access to some ‌of its systems, a company spokesperson said on Thursday. The ShinyHunters hacking group told Reuters in a message it stole at least 700 terabytes ​of data from Telus. All business ​operations within the company “remain fully operational, and there ...

  • CISA warns max-severity n8n bug is being exploited in the wild

    March 12, 2026

    The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has confirmed that hackers are exploiting a max-severity remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in workflow automation platform n8n. CISA urged all federal civilian executive branch (FCEB) agencies to patch CVE-2025-68613 at once because it carries a near-perfect 9.9 vulnerability score. The bug was first disclosed in December, and ...

  • Iran-linked hackers launch cyberattack against U.S. medtech company Stryker

    March 11, 2026

    U.S. medical technology company Stryker is currently experiencing a massive cyberattack, which has shut down their computer systems and, as a result, even closed the company’s offices. An Iran-linked digital activist collective known as Handala is claiming credit for the cyberattack against Stryker. This would be the first major cyberattack carried out in the wake of the ...