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BACKWARDS-INCOMPATIBLE: Fix XSRF security vulnerability.
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This is a backwards-incompatible change.  Applications that previously
relied on a blanket exception for XMLHTTPRequest may need to be modified
to explicitly include the XSRF token when making ajax requests.

The tornado chat demo application demonstrates one way of adding this
token (specifically the function postJSON in demos/chat/static/chat.js).

More information about this change and its justification can be found at
http://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2011/feb/08/security/
http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/2/8/csrf-protection-bypass-in-ruby-on-rails

Closes tornadoweb#214.
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bdarnell committed Feb 9, 2011
1 parent 2338348 commit 90b8078
Showing 1 changed file with 18 additions and 7 deletions.
25 changes: 18 additions & 7 deletions tornado/web.py
Expand Up @@ -709,16 +709,27 @@ def xsrf_token(self):
def check_xsrf_cookie(self):
"""Verifies that the '_xsrf' cookie matches the '_xsrf' argument.
To prevent cross-site request forgery, we set an '_xsrf' cookie
and include the same '_xsrf' value as an argument with all POST
requests. If the two do not match, we reject the form submission
as a potential forgery.
To prevent cross-site request forgery, we set an '_xsrf'
cookie and include the same value as a non-cookie
field with all POST requests. If the two do not match, we
reject the form submission as a potential forgery.
The _xsrf value may be set as either a form field named _xsrf
or in a custom HTTP header named X-XSRFToken or X-CSRFToken
(the latter is accepted for compatibility with Django).
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_request_forgery
Prior to release 1.1.1, this check was ignored if the HTTP header
"X-Requested-With: XMLHTTPRequest" was present. This exception
has been shown to be insecure and has been removed. For more
information please see
http://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2011/feb/08/security/
http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/2/8/csrf-protection-bypass-in-ruby-on-rails
"""
if self.request.headers.get("X-Requested-With") == "XMLHttpRequest":
return
token = self.get_argument("_xsrf", None)
token = (self.get_argument("_xsrf", None) or
self.request.headers.get("X-Xsrftoken") or
self.request.headers.get("X-Csrftoken"))
if not token:
raise HTTPError(403, "'_xsrf' argument missing from POST")
if self.xsrf_token != token:
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