Security Intermediate

What is CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery)?

An attack that tricks authenticated users into submitting unwanted requests to a web application they are logged into.

CSRF exploits the trust a website has in a user's browser. An attacker creates a page with a hidden form that submits to the target site. If the user is logged in, the browser sends their cookies, and the request succeeds.

Prevention includes CSRF tokens (unique per-session tokens in forms), SameSite cookie attribute, checking the Referer/Origin header, and requiring re-authentication for sensitive actions.

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Related Terms

Penetration Testing

An authorized simulated cyberattack on a system to evaluate its security defenses and identify vulnerabilities.

SAST (Static Application Security Testing)

Automated analysis of source code to find security vulnerabilities without executing the application.

Security Hardening

The process of reducing a system's attack surface by disabling unnecessary services, applying patches, and configuring security controls.

CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing)

A browser security mechanism that controls which web domains can access resources from another domain via HTTP requests.

An authorization framework that allows third-party applications to access user resources without sharing passwords.

DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing)

Testing a running application from the outside by sending malicious requests to discover security vulnerabilities.

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