CSRF Guard 2.2 Roadmap

Overview

The purpose of this article is to maintain the desired change requests for the upcoming CSRFGuard releases. If there is a particular feature that you would like to see implemented, please feel free to add it to the appropriate sections below.

Completed Changes

The following is a list of changes that have been implemented for the development version of J2EE CSRFGuard 2.2:

1. JavaScriptHandler now iterates over all DOM elements and puts the token in if the element is a form or has a 'src' or 'href' attribute.
2. Allow the user to define "entry point pages" whose token is never validated but a token always gets inserted
3. Allow the user to define "unprotected pages" that we will simply ignore. By default, all pages are "protected"
4. Update the response handlers to support the various locations that an "href" and "src" attribute can be placed in the HTML 5 spec
5. Visiting the page and clicking "refresh" is caught as a CSRF attack. Only verify the token if parameters exist in the request (optional).
6. Allow the developer to specify where to send the user on the initial request (i.e. when the token is being created). Prevents initial CSRF attacks against unauthenticated users.

Planned Changes

The following is a list of changes that are tentatively scheduled for the J2EE CSRFGuard 2.2 release:

1. Modify the response handlers to only place the token in links/forms that point to our origin
2. Add basic JavaScript support for invocations such as "document.location" or "window.location"
3. Optionally randomize the CSRF token parameter name.
4. Add a "CSRF Token" JSP Tag library that developers can call in their JSP to dynamically add the token.

Deferred Changes

The following is a list of changes that were suggested but not implemented:

1. Port the existing configuration file to an XML based config file
2. Allow the user to define a list of "known safe extensions" that do not require CSRF checks

Changes Under Consideration

The following is a list of change requests that are still under consideration:

TBD