## TL;DR
Sqlmap holds one cookie for the whole run, so when the app session expires mid-run, every subsequent request tests the logged-out state and the results go stale. Detect the logged-out pattern (login-page redirects or login forms in responses), re-login through the engagement's session procedure, update the cookie, and resume the sqlmap session from its saved state.

```text
agent session cookie expired mid-sqlmap-run; authorized target scan failed
```

## Use this when
- Sqlmap starts well and its results degrade partway through the run.
- Responses mid-run start showing login pages or session-expired markers.
- The target app has short session timeouts and the engagement provides a login procedure.

## Not for this skill when
- Sqlmap never authenticated. Then the cookie was wrong from the start; fix the initial session.
- Sqlmap is blocked by a WAF. That shows as block pages, not login pages.
- The session belongs to an app outside your authorized engagement. Do not use it.

## Steps
1. Confirm the logged-out pattern: sample responses from the failing phase and check for login forms or redirect-to-login. Verify: the pattern appears in the failing phase and not in the early phase.
2. Pause sqlmap but keep its session file; do not delete it. Verify: the session file exists and has a recent modification time.
3. Re-run the engagement's login procedure (the same steps the agent used at setup) and capture the fresh session cookie. Verify: one manual request with the new cookie returns the authenticated page.
4. Update the cookie in the sqlmap invocation and resume from the saved session. Verify: resumed requests return authenticated responses again.
5. Mark the findings from the logged-out phase as suspect and re-test those parameters. Verify: no finding in the final report comes only from the logged-out window.

## Variant phrasings
### sqlmap session expired halfway
Common phrasing.
### sqlmap cookie expired during scan
Symptom-level search.
### resume sqlmap after re-login
Workflow phrasing.

Compatibility: sqlmap 1.8+ session files. Works with any cookie-based app session.

## Why it happens
Web sessions expire on inactivity or absolute timers, and sqlmap's request pattern can look inactive to the app between test batches. The agent launched sqlmap with a good cookie hours ago and never considered that cookies are perishable.

## Edge cases / pitfalls
- Some apps invalidate all sessions on password events. If the engagement rotated credentials, every saved session is dead; start over.
- Findings gathered while logged out test the anonymous surface, which is a different scope. Re-test or exclude them; never silently keep them.
- Automating re-login in a loop can lock the test account. Cap re-login attempts and page the tester after two failures.

## Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_NU-tzvQIAQHrLGuUQMq1kQ