Hi, my application currently uses CryptedUrlWebRequestCodingStrategy to protect against CRSF attacks. Afaik 1.3.5 will include an update that generates the key based on user sessions: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/WICKET-1782 According to Johan Compagner, there are still issues with that approach, though I don't know if that has been fixed: http://www.nabble.com/Wicket-not-secure--to19556259.html#a19557593
Anyway, the point of this mail is to bring up a different strategy for CSRF protection, the double-submitted-cookie. Discussion of that are here http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001175.html which links to this article, including a whitepaper: http://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/wzeller/popular-websites-vulnerable-cross-site-request-forgery-attacks The basic idea is: "When a user visits a site, the site should generate a (cryptographically strong) pseudorandom value and set it as a cookie on the user's machine. The site should require every form submission to include this pseudorandom value as a form value and also as a cookie value. When a POST request is sent to the site, the request should only be considered valid if the form value and the cookie value are the same. When an attacker submits a form on behalf of a user, he can only modify the values of the form. An attacker cannot read any data sent from the server or modify cookie values, per the same-origin policy. This means that while an attacker can send any value he wants with the form, he will be unable to modify or read the value stored in the cookie. Since the cookie value and the form value must be the same, the attacker will be unable to successfully submit a form unless he is able to guess the pseudorandom value." For Wicket, this would mean: Generate a pseudorandom value and set is as a session cookie, when the cookie doesn't yet exist. Insert a hidden input into each form with the generated value. Validate that the value equals the cookie when submitting a form. The input and validation can be abstracted into a Form subclass (or even add it to Wicket's Form class...). That really easy to implement, is much more efficient (generate only one value per user/browser session, store it on the client, not the server) and is now the most common strategy to protect against CSRF attacks. I've read a lot about CSRF, and this strategy seems the only one both easy enough to implement and without holes. What do you think? Should Wicket support that out-of-the-box? Jörn
