CSRF

CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) is an attack that impersonates a trusted user and sends a website unwanted commands.

This can be done, for example, by including malicious parameters in a URL behind a link that purports to go somewhere else:

html

<img src="https://www.example.com/index.php?action=delete&id=123" />

For users who have modification permissions on https://www.example.com, the <img> element executes action on https://www.example.com without their noticing, even if the element is not at https://www.example.com.

There are many ways to prevent CSRF, such as implementing RESTful API, adding secure tokens, etc.

See also