Thousands of Firefox cookie databases containing sensitive data are available on request from GitHub repositories, data potentially usable for hijacking authenticated sessions.
These cookies.sqlite databases normally reside in the Firefox profiles folder. They’re used to store cookies between browsing sessions. And they’re findable by searching GitHub with specific query parameters, what’s known as a search “dork.”
Aidan Martin, a security engineer at London-based rail travel service Trainline, alerted The Register to the public availability of these files after reporting his findings through HackerOne and being told by a GitHub representative that “credentials exposed by our users are not in scope for our Bug Bounty program.”
Martin then asked whether he could make his findings public and was told he’s free to do so.