This article is a part of our Vulnerability Database (back to index)
Cross-Site Request Forgery occurrences in Webargs
flaskparser.py in Webargs 5.x through 5.5.2 doesn't check that the Content-Type header is application/json when receiving JSON input. If the request body is valid JSON, it will accept it even if the content type is application/x-www-form-urlencoded. This allows for JSON POST requests to be made across domains, leading to CSRF. (2020-01-29, CVE-2020-7965)
Why Cross-Site Request Forgery can be dangerous
The absence of Anti-CSRF tokens may lead to a Cross-Site Request Forgery attack that can result in executing a specific application action as another logged in user, e.g. steal their account by changing their email and password or silently adding a new admin user account when executed from the administrator account.
The attacker may copy one of your web application forms, e.g. email/password change form.
The webpage will contain a form with the exact set of fields as the original application but with input values already provided and the submit button replaced with a Javascript code causing auto-submission. When the page is accessed the form will be immediately submitted and page contents replaced with a valid content or a redirect to your original application.
One of your application users who is already logged in can be then tricked to navigate to such malicious page e.g. by clicking a link in a phishing email, and the pre-populated form content will be submitted to your application like it would be submitted by your user.