CWE - CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) (4.16)

Weakness ID: 352 (Structure: Composite) Composite - a Compound Element that consists of two or more distinct weaknesses, in which all weaknesses must be present at the same time in order for a potential vulnerability to arise. Removing any of the weaknesses eliminates or sharply reduces the risk. One weakness, X, can be "broken down" into component weaknesses Y and Z. There can be cases in which one weakness might not be essential to a composite, but changes the nature of the composite when it becomes a vulnerability.

Vulnerability Mapping: ALLOWED This CWE ID may be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities

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Description

The web application does not, or can not, sufficiently verify whether a well-formed, valid, consistent request was intentionally provided by the user who submitted the request.

Extended Description

When a web server is designed to receive a request from a client without any mechanism for verifying that it was intentionally sent, then it might be possible for an attacker to trick a client into making an unintentional request to the web server which will be treated as an authentic request. This can be done via a URL, image load, XMLHttpRequest, etc. and can result in exposure of data or unintended code execution.

Alternate Terms

Session Riding
Cross Site Reference Forgery
XSRF

Common Consequences

This table specifies different individual consequences associated with the weakness. The Scope identifies the application security area that is violated, while the Impact describes the negative technical impact that arises if an adversary succeeds in exploiting this weakness. The Likelihood provides information about how likely the specific consequence is expected to be seen relative to the other consequences in the list. For example, there may be high likelihood that a weakness will be exploited to achieve a certain impact, but a low likelihood that it will be exploited to achieve a different impact.

Scope	Impact	Likelihood
Confidentiality Integrity Availability Non-Repudiation Access Control	Technical Impact: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity; Bypass Protection Mechanism; Read Application Data; Modify Application Data; DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart The consequences will vary depending on the nature of the functionality that is vulnerable to CSRF. An attacker could effectively perform any operations as the victim. If the victim is an administrator or privileged user, the consequences may include obtaining complete control over the web application - deleting or stealing data, uninstalling the product, or using it to launch other attacks against all of the product's users. Because the attacker has the identity of the victim, the scope of CSRF is limited only by the victim's privileges.

Potential Mitigations

Phase: Architecture and Design

Strategy: Libraries or Frameworks

Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.

For example, use anti-CSRF packages such as the OWASP CSRFGuard. [REF-330]

Another example is the ESAPI Session Management control, which includes a component for CSRF. [REF-45]

Phase: Implementation

Ensure that the application is free of cross-site scripting issues (CWE-79), because most CSRF defenses can be bypassed using attacker-controlled script.

Phase: Architecture and Design

Generate a unique nonce for each form, place the nonce into the form, and verify the nonce upon receipt of the form. Be sure that the nonce is not predictable (CWE-330). [REF-332]

Note: Note that this can be bypassed using XSS (CWE-79).

Phase: Architecture and Design

Identify especially dangerous operations. When the user performs a dangerous operation, send a separate confirmation request to ensure that the user intended to perform that operation.

Note: Note that this can be bypassed using XSS (CWE-79).

Phase: Architecture and Design

Use the "double-submitted cookie" method as described by Felten and Zeller:

When a user visits a site, the site should generate a pseudorandom value and set it as a cookie on the user's machine. The site should require every form submission to include this value as a form value and also as a cookie value. When a POST request is sent to the site, the request should only be considered valid if the form value and the cookie value are the same.

Because of the same-origin policy, an attacker cannot read or modify the value stored in the cookie. To successfully submit a form on behalf of the user, the attacker would have to correctly guess the pseudorandom value. If the pseudorandom value is cryptographically strong, this will be prohibitively difficult.

This technique requires Javascript, so it may not work for browsers that have Javascript disabled. [REF-331]

Note: Note that this can probably be bypassed using XSS (CWE-79), or when using web technologies that enable the attacker to read raw headers from HTTP requests.

Phase: Architecture and Design

Do not use the GET method for any request that triggers a state change.

Phase: Implementation

Check the HTTP Referer header to see if the request originated from an expected page. This could break legitimate functionality, because users or proxies may have disabled sending the Referer for privacy reasons.

Note: Note that this can be bypassed using XSS (CWE-79). An attacker could use XSS to generate a spoofed Referer, or to generate a malicious request from a page whose Referer would be allowed.

Composite Components

Nature	Type	ID	Name
Requires	Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource.	346	Origin Validation Error
Requires	Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource.	441	Unintended Proxy or Intermediary ('Confused Deputy')
Requires	Base - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.	613	Insufficient Session Expiration
Requires	Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource.	642	External Control of Critical State Data

Relationships

This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined as ChildOf, ParentOf, MemberOf and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as PeerOf and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar weaknesses that the user may want to explore.

Relevant to the view "Research Concepts" (CWE-1000)

Nature	Type	ID	Name
ChildOf	Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource.	345	Insufficient Verification of Data Authenticity
PeerOf	Base - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.	79	Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CanFollow	Variant - a weakness that is linked to a certain type of product, typically involving a specific language or technology. More specific than a Base weakness. Variant level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 3 to 5 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.	1275	Sensitive Cookie with Improper SameSite Attribute

Relevant to the view "Weaknesses for Simplified Mapping of Published Vulnerabilities" (CWE-1003)

Nature	Type	ID	Name
ChildOf	Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource.	345	Insufficient Verification of Data Authenticity

Relevant to the view "Architectural Concepts" (CWE-1008)

Nature	Type	ID	Name
MemberOf	Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.	1019	Validate Inputs

Modes Of Introduction

The different Modes of Introduction provide information about how and when this weakness may be introduced. The Phase identifies a point in the life cycle at which introduction may occur, while the Note provides a typical scenario related to introduction during the given phase.

Phase	Note
Architecture and Design	REALIZATION: This weakness is caused during implementation of an architectural security tactic.

Applicable Platforms

This listing shows possible areas for which the given weakness could appear. These may be for specific named Languages, Operating Systems, Architectures, Paradigms, Technologies, or a class of such platforms. The platform is listed along with how frequently the given weakness appears for that instance.

Languages

Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

Technologies

Web Server (Undetermined Prevalence)

Likelihood Of Exploit

Medium

Demonstrative Examples

Example 1

This example PHP code attempts to secure the form submission process by validating that the user submitting the form has a valid session. A CSRF attack would not be prevented by this countermeasure because the attacker forges a request through the user's web browser in which a valid session already exists.

The following HTML is intended to allow a user to update a profile.

(bad code)

Example Language: HTML

profile.php contains the following code.

(bad code)

Example Language: PHP

// initiate the session in order to validate sessions

session_start();

//if the session is registered to a valid user then allow update

if (! session_is_registered("username")) {

echo "invalid session detected!";

// Redirect user to login page
[...]

exit;

}

// The user session is valid, so process the request

// and update the information

update_profile();

function update_profile {

// read in the data from $POST and send an update

// to the database
SendUpdateToDatabase($_SESSION['username'], $_POST['email']);
[...]
echo "Your profile has been successfully updated.";

}

This code may look protected since it checks for a valid session. However, CSRF attacks can be staged from virtually any tag or HTML construct, including image tags, links, embed or object tags, or other attributes that load background images.

The attacker can then host code that will silently change the username and email address of any user that visits the page while remaining logged in to the target web application. The code might be an innocent-looking web page such as:

(attack code)

Example Language: HTML

<SCRIPT>
function SendAttack () {

form.email = "attacker@example.com";
// send to profile.php
form.submit();

}
</SCRIPT>

<BODY onload="javascript:SendAttack();">

<form action="http://victim.example.com/profile.php" id="form" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="firstname" value="Funny">
<input type="hidden" name="lastname" value="Joke">
<br/>
<input type="hidden" name="email">
</form>

Notice how the form contains hidden fields, so when it is loaded into the browser, the user will not notice it. Because SendAttack() is defined in the body's onload attribute, it will be automatically called when the victim loads the web page.

Assuming that the user is already logged in to victim.example.com, profile.php will see that a valid user session has been established, then update the email address to the attacker's own address. At this stage, the user's identity has been compromised, and messages sent through this profile could be sent to the attacker's address.

Observed Examples

Reference	Description
CVE-2004-1703	Add user accounts via a URL in an img tag
CVE-2004-1995	Add user accounts via a URL in an img tag
CVE-2004-1967	Arbitrary code execution by specifying the code in a crafted img tag or URL
CVE-2004-1842	Gain administrative privileges via a URL in an img tag
CVE-2005-1947	Delete a victim's information via a URL or an img tag
CVE-2005-2059	Change another user's settings via a URL or an img tag
CVE-2005-1674	Perform actions as administrator via a URL or an img tag
CVE-2009-3520	modify password for the administrator
CVE-2009-3022	CMS allows modification of configuration via CSRF attack against the administrator
CVE-2009-3759	web interface allows password changes or stopping a virtual machine via CSRF

Detection Methods

Manual Analysis

This weakness can be detected using tools and techniques that require manual (human) analysis, such as penetration testing, threat modeling, and interactive tools that allow the tester to record and modify an active session.

Specifically, manual analysis can be useful for finding this weakness, and for minimizing false positives assuming an understanding of business logic. However, it might not achieve desired code coverage within limited time constraints. For black-box analysis, if credentials are not known for privileged accounts, then the most security-critical portions of the application may not receive sufficient attention.

Consider using OWASP CSRFTester to identify potential issues and aid in manual analysis.

Effectiveness: High

Note: These may be more effective than strictly automated techniques. This is especially the case with weaknesses that are related to design and business rules.

Automated Static Analysis

CSRF is currently difficult to detect reliably using automated techniques. This is because each application has its own implicit security policy that dictates which requests can be influenced by an outsider and automatically performed on behalf of a user, versus which requests require strong confidence that the user intends to make the request. For example, a keyword search of the public portion of a web site is typically expected to be encoded within a link that can be launched automatically when the user clicks on the link.

Effectiveness: Limited

Automated Static Analysis - Binary or Bytecode