Book Image

Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux - Third Edition

By : Gilberto Najera-Gutierrez, Juned Ahmed Ansari
Book Image

Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux - Third Edition

By: Gilberto Najera-Gutierrez, Juned Ahmed Ansari

Overview of this book

Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux - Third Edition shows you how to set up a lab, helps you understand the nature and mechanics of attacking websites, and explains classical attacks in great depth. This edition is heavily updated for the latest Kali Linux changes and the most recent attacks. Kali Linux shines when it comes to client-side attacks and fuzzing in particular. From the start of the book, you'll be given a thorough grounding in the concepts of hacking and penetration testing, and you'll see the tools used in Kali Linux that relate to web application hacking. You'll gain a deep understanding of classicalSQL, command-injection flaws, and the many ways to exploit these flaws. Web penetration testing also needs a general overview of client-side attacks, which is rounded out by a long discussion of scripting and input validation flaws. There is also an important chapter on cryptographic implementation flaws, where we discuss the most recent problems with cryptographic layers in the networking stack. The importance of these attacks cannot be overstated, and defending against them is relevant to most internet users and, of course, penetration testers. At the end of the book, you'll use an automated technique called fuzzing to identify flaws in a web application. Finally, you'll gain an understanding of web application vulnerabilities and the ways they can be exploited using the tools in Kali Linux.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Chapter 7. Cross-Site Request Forgery, Identification, and Exploitation

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) is often mistakenly perceived as a vulnerability that is similar to XSS. XSS exploits the trust a user has in a particular site, which makes the user believe any information presented by the website. On the other hand, CSRF exploits the trust that a website has in a user's browser, which has the website execute any request coming from an authenticated session without verifying if the user wanted to perform that specific action.

In a CSRF attack, the attacker makes authenticated users perform unwanted actions in the web application in which they are authenticated. This is accomplished through an external site that the user visits, which triggers these actions.

CSRF can exploit every web application function that requires a single request within an authenticated session if sufficient defense is not implemented. Here are some examples of the actions that attackers can perform through a CSRF...