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Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- This is an Attack. To view all attacks, please see the Attack Category page.
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF/XSRF) is an attack that tricks the victim into loading a page that contains img links like the one below:
<img src="http://www.mybank.com/transferFunds.do?acctId=123456" />
When the victim's browser attempts to render this page, it will issue a request to www.mybank.com to the transferFunds.do page with the specified parameters. The browser will think the link is to get an image, even though it actually is a funds transfer function.
The request will include any cookies associated with the site. Therefore, if the user has authenticated to the site, and has either a permanent cookie or even a current session cookie, the site will have no way to distinguish this from a legitimate user request.
In this way, the attacker can make the victim perform actions that they didn't intend to, such as logout, purchase item, or any other function provided by the vulnerable website.
