Cross-site request forgery

Imagine you're playing with your toys in your room, and your friend comes over to play too. Your friend asks you to fetch them a snack from the kitchen, and you happily oblige. But while you're gone, your friend goes through all your toys and messes them up. That wouldn't be fair, right?

That's kind of like cross-site request forgery. It's when someone tricks you into doing something on one website that actually accomplishes something on another website without your knowledge or consent. Just like how your friend tricked you into leaving your toys vulnerable, someone cross-site forgery could trick you into inadvertently performing actions on another website that you didn't mean to.

This can happen if you're signed into two different websites in different tabs on your browser, and one of them gets compromised by someone malicious. They could then use your signed-in status on the first website to make it look like you're doing something on the second website. This often happens with sensitive actions, like transferring funds or changing your personal information, which could be very bad if someone else had control of it.

Luckily, there are ways to protect yourself against cross-site request forgery, just like how you could tell your friend not to mess up your toys. Website developers can use techniques like adding a code to each request that the server can verify, or adding a token to the request that makes sure it's coming from a legitimate source. These measures can help keep you safe from unintentionally giving your consent to something that could hurt you.