Items tagged security, csrf
Filters: security × csrf × Sorted by date
Exploring the SameSite cookie attribute for preventing CSRF
In reading Yan Zhu’s excellent write-up of the JSON CSRF vulnerability she found in OkCupid one thing puzzled me: I was under the impression that browsers these days default to treating cookies as SameSite=Lax, so I would expect attacks like the one Yan described not to work in modern browsers.
OkCupid had a CSRF vulnerability (via) Good write-up of a (now fixed) CSRF vulnerability on OkCupid. Their site worked by POSTing JSON objects to an API. JSON POSTs are usually protected against CSRF because they can only be sent using fetch() or XMLHttpRequest, which are protected by the same-origin policy. Yan Zhu notes that you can use the enctype="text/plain" attribute on a form (introduced in HTML5) and a crafty hidden input element with name='{"foo":"' value='bar"}' to construct JSON in an off-site form, which enabled CSRF attacks. # 2nd August 2021, 10:12 pm
Weeknotes: datasette-ics, datasette-upload-csvs, datasette-configure-fts, asgi-csrf
I’ve been preparing for the NICAR 2020 Data Journalism conference this week which has lead me into a flurry of activity across a plethora of different projects and plugins.
[... 834 words]OWASP Top 10 2007-2017: The Fall of CSRF. I was surprised to learn recently that CSRF didn’t make it into the 2017 OWASP Top 10 security vulnerabilities (after featuring almost every year since the list started). The credited reason is that web frameworks do a good enough job protecting against CSRF by default that it’s no longer a top-ten problem. Defaults really do matter. # 6th August 2018, 10:02 pm
CSRF: Flash + 307 redirect = Game Over. Here’s the exploit that Django and Rails both just released fixes for. It’s actually a flaw in the Flash player. Flash isn’t meant to be able to make cross-domain HTTP requests with custom HTTP headers unless the crossdomain.xml file on the other domain allows them to, but it turns out a 307 redirect (like a 302, but allows POST data to be forwarded) confuses the Flash player in to not checking the crossdomain.xml on the host it is being redirect to. # 10th February 2011, 10:07 pm
OpenCart CSRF Vulnerability. Avoid OpenCart—it’s vulnerable to CSRF, but the maintainer has no intention of fixing it as “there is no way that I’m responsible for a client being stupid enough to click links in emails”. # 25th May 2010, 12 am
Django ponies: Proposals for Django 1.2
I’ve decided to step up my involvement in Django development in the run-up to Django 1.2, so I’m currently going through several years worth of accumulated pony requests figuring out which ones are worth advocating for. I’m also ensuring I have the code to back them up—my innocent AutoEscaping proposal a few years ago resulted in an enormous amount of work by Malcolm and I don’t think he’d appreciate a repeat performance.
[... 1674 words]Amazon Says Listing Problem Was an Error, Not a Hack (via) “A friend within the company told him that someone working on Amazon’s French site mistagged a number of keyword categories, including the ’Gay and Lesbian’ category, as pornographic, using what’s known internally as the Browse Nodes tool. Soon the mistake affected Amazon sites worldwide.” # 14th April 2009, 8:32 am
How to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code. Looks legit—the author claims to have sparked this weekend’s #amazonfail moral outrage (where Amazon where accused of removing Gay and Lesbian books from their best seller rankings) by exploiting a CSRF hole in Amazon’s “report as inappropriate” feature to trigger automatic takedowns. EDIT: His claim is disputed elsewhere (see comments) # 13th April 2009, 7:48 pm
17-year-old claims responsibility for Twitter worm. It was a text book XSS attack—the URL on the user profile wasn’t properly escaped, allowing an attacker to insert a script element linking out to externally hosted JavaScript which then used Ajax to steal any logged-in user’s anti-CSRF token and use it to self-replicate in to their profile. # 12th April 2009, 7:22 pm
CSRF is not a security issue for the Web. A well-designed Web service should be capable of receiving requests directed by any host, by design, with appropriate authentication where needed. If browsers create a security issue because they allow scripts to automatically direct requests with stored security credentials onto third-party sites, without any user intervention/configuration, then the obvious fix is within the browser.
— Roy Fielding # 23rd January 2009, 8:14 am
When visiting any Web page, the site owner is easily able to ascertain what websites you’ve visited (CSS color hacks) or places you’re logged-in (JavaScript errors / IMG loading behavior). They can also automatically exploit your online bank, social network, and webmail accounts (XSS). Additionally, the browser could be instructed to hack devices on the intranet, including DSL routers and printers. And, if that’s not enough, they could turn you into a felon by forcing requests to illegal content or hack other sites (CSRF).
— Jeremiah Grossman # 3rd November 2008, 12:43 pm
Web Security Horror Stories: The Director’s Cut. Slides from the talk on web application security I gave this morning at <head>, the worldwide online conference. I just about managed to resist the temptation to present in my boxers. Topics include XSS, CSRF, Login CSRF and Clickjacking. # 26th October 2008, 12:15 pm
We’ve found CSRF vulnerabilities in sites that have a huge incentive to do security correctly. If you’re in charge of a website and haven’t specifically protected against CSRF, chances are you’re vulnerable.
— Bill Zeller # 29th September 2008, 1:11 pm
Popular Websites Vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery Attacks. Ed Felten and Bill Zeller announce four CSRF holes, in ING Direct, YouTube, MetaFilter and the New York Times. The ING Direct hole allowed transfer of funds out of a user’s bank accounts! The first three were fixed before publication; the New York Times hole still exists (despite being reported a year ago), and allows you to silently steal e-mail addresses by CSRFing the “E-mail this” feature. # 29th September 2008, 1:08 pm
Logout/Login CSRF. Alf Eaton built an example page (this link goes to his description, not the page itself) that uses a login CSRF attack to log you in to Google using an account he has created. Scary. # 24th September 2008, 10:18 pm
csrf_protect.php. A PHP class for applying CSRF protection to existing PHP applications, using output buffering to rewrite any POST forms on a page. Heavily inspired by Django’s CSRF middleware. Tell me if you spot any bugs! # 24th September 2008, 2:52 pm
Robust Defenses for Cross-Site Request Forgery [PDF]. Fascinating report which introduces the “login CSRF” attack, where an attacker uses CSRF to log a user in to a site (e.g. PayPal) using the attacker’s credentials, then waits for them to submit sensitive information or bind the account to their credit card. The paper also includes an in-depth study of potential protection measures, including research that shows that 3-11% of HTTP requests to a popular ad network have had their referer header stripped. Around 0.05%-0.10% of requests have custom HTTP headers such as X-Requested-By stripped. # 24th September 2008, 9:40 am
When Ajax Attacks! Web application security fundamentals. Slides and notes from my talk on web application security at @media Ajax last Tuesday. # 20th September 2008, 4:16 pm
When Ajax Attacks! Web application security fundamentals. Slides and (other people’s) notes from my presentation at @media Ajax on Tuesday. # 17th September 2008, 11:18 pm
Django: Security fix released. The Django admin used to save partially-submitted forms if your session expired, and continue the submission when you logged in. It turns out that’s actually an unblockable CSRF exploit and is hence broken as designed, so it’s now been removed. Thanks Ed Eliot and other GCap colleagues for helping me flesh out the potential attack. # 3rd September 2008, 12:14 am
ratproxy. “A semi-automated, largely passive web application security audit tool”—watches you browse and highlights potential XSS, CSRF and other vulnerabilities in your application. Created by Michal Zalewski at Google. # 3rd July 2008, 2:35 pm
Crossdomain.xml Invites Cross-site Mayhem. A useful reminder that crossdomain.xml files should be treated with extreme caution. Allowing access from * makes it impossible to protect your site against CSRF attacks, and even allowing from a “circle of trust” of domains can be fatal if just one of those domains has an XSS hole. # 15th May 2008, 8:06 am
CSRF presentation at RSA 2008. It terrifies me how few people understand CSRF, years after it was discovered. I’ll say it again: if you’re a web developer and you don’t know what that acronym means, go spend an hour reading about it—because the chances are your applications are vulnerable. # 12th April 2008, 10:52 am
David Airey: Google’s Gmail security failure leaves my business sabotaged (via) Gmail had a CSRF hole a while ago that allowed attackers to add forwarding filter rules to your account. David Airey’s domain name was hijacked by an extortionist who forwarded the transfer confirmation e-mail on to themselves. # 26th December 2007, 12:16 pm
Site-specific browsers and GreaseKit. New site-specific browser tool which lets you include a bunch of Greasemonkey scripts. For me, the killer feature of site-specific browsers is still cookie isolation (to minimise the impact of XSS and CSRF holes) but none of the current batch of tools advertise this as a feature, and most seem to want to share the system-wide cookie jar. # 25th October 2007, 7:56 am
Designing for a security breach
User account breaches are inevitable. We should take that in to account when designing our applications.
[... 545 words]Currently WebRunner applications share cookies with other WebRunner applications, but not with Firefox. WebRunner uses its own profile, not Firefox’s profile. There is a plan to allow WebRunner applications to create their own, private profiles as well.
— Mark Finkle # 30th September 2007, 4:08 pm
WebRunner 0.7—New and Improved. A simple application for running a site-specific browser for a service (e.g. Twitter, Gmail etc). This is a great idea: it isolates your other browser windows from crashes and also isolates your cookies, helping guard against CSRF attacks. # 27th September 2007, 1:55 pm