Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) is a type of security threat where a cyber attacker tricks a victim into performing actions that the victim did not intend to perform, likely taking advantage of their authenticated status on a certain site. A CSRF attack forces a logged-on victim’s browser to send a forged HTTP request, including the victim’s session cookie and other automatic information, to a vulnerable web application. This allows the attacker to force the victim’s browser to make a request to a site with which the victim is already authenticated, thereby tricking the web application into performing an unwanted action (https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross-Site_Request_Forgery\_(CSRF)).
Django, a popular Python web development framework, takes CSRF seriously and has built-in means to guard against this type of attack. Django’s CSRF protection is provided via middleware and template tags that are designed to be easy to use. It ensures that POST requests are made from the same site by inserting CSRF tokens in every rendered form (https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.2/topics/security/#cross-site-request-forgery-csrf-protection).
Let’s take an example: While using Django, if a form is generated using the POST method to submit the data, Django template will automatically include a hidden input field generated by the CSRF token template tag. This field consists of a value that could be used to prevent CSRF attacks. A sample form would look something like:
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The “{% csrf\_token %}” placeholder is the Django template tag that gets replaced by an HTML hidden input field with a value that will be used to prevent CSRF attacks.
If there happens to be an actual CSRF attack, Django will not process the form data and will raise an `403 Forbidden` error. This error is raised because the middleware provided by Django checks for a valid CSRF token for all the POST requests.
However, there are certain cases where you might need to bypass CSRF protection in Django, such as the usage of APIs. In such cases, Django provides decorators like @csrf\_exempt that can be used to turn off the CSRF checks.
Django’s CSRF protection assumes that you are operating within a standard web application model and can be less effective if your site allows Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS). So, while Django offers a good protection out-of-box against CSRF, it is important to make sure that other security practices are also followed and Django’s CSRF protection is appropriately configured.
Sources used:
1. https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross-Site_Request_Forgery\_(CSRF)
2. https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.2/topics/security/#cross-site-request-forgery-csrf-protection
