PaulDotCom mailing list archives

Twitter Hijacking


From: softreset64738 at gmail.com (Soft Reset)
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:27:42 -0800

Interesting.  Wikipedia seemed to consider CSRF and XSRFs the same.  Either
way, I did wonder if this token changed so I took a look at different
Twitter forms to see and whether I submitted information or just went to
view other forms, the token remained the same.

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 6:03 PM, John Miller <johnemiller at gmail.com> wrote:

For CSRF, the token just needs to change for each submission. It can only
be used once, so sniffing it is pointless. I didn't take a closer look at
exactly how Twitter handles this, but generally, a cookie will store the
Authentication data while a hidden field stores a per-request token to
prevent CSRF.

What this is protecting against is a 3rd party site including something
like <img src="http://twitter/doSomthingBad";>. Since they won't have the
single use token, that request can't do anything.

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 6:38 PM, Soft Reset <softreset64738 at gmail.com>wrote:

Makes sense if the connection protected the token.  According to
Wikipedia,

  "Requiring a secret, user-specific token in all form submissions
prevents
   CSRF; the attacker's site can't put the right token in its 
submissions.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_request_forgery#cite_note-Shiflett-0>
[1]"

But if the form Twitter returns (containing the token) is returned over
HTTP (which it is), the token is not secret and does not need to be
predicted...just eavesdropped.

Does this sound right or am I way off and misunderstanding the whole
concept of XSRFs?

--sr6


On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 3:23 PM, Chris Biettchert <
chris.biettchert at gmail.com> wrote:

The authenticity_token is used for for xsrf protection. It works as
intended as long as it can not be predicted for another user.

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 10:36 AM, Soft Reset <softreset64738 at gmail.com>wrote:

I just noticed it and was wondering if anyone else had.  Twitter has
their "authenticity_token" as a 'hidden' input on forms...including password
changes, resets, etc.  Anyone tried hijacking a twitter login to verify this
is bad form (no pun intended)?  Don't want to re-invent the wheel if someone
already did it.

If someone has tried it successfully, has it been brought up to the
twitter folks as a push for full SSL sessions?  (yeah, I know SSL is also
having issues at the moment, but still...)

--sr6

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