What are CSRF vulnerabilities in MVC applications?

What are CSRF vulnerabilities in MVC applications?

CSRF, or Cross-Site Request Forgery, is a type of attack that tricks a user into executing unwanted actions on a web application in which they're authenticated. In MVC applications, this can lead to unauthorized actions being performed without the user's consent.

How can I prevent CSRF attacks in my MVC app?

To prevent CSRF attacks, you can implement anti-CSRF tokens, ensure that state-changing requests require these tokens, and use the SameSite cookie attribute.

Can you explain how anti-CSRF tokens work?

Anti-CSRF tokens are unique, secret values generated by the server and sent to the client. When the client submits a form, this token is included, and the server verifies it to ensure the request is legitimate.

What are some common frameworks that help with CSRF protection?

Many frameworks, like ASP.NET MVC, Django, and Ruby on Rails, have built-in support for CSRF protection, making it easier to implement.