Disable CSRF on AEM 6.3

[mehmetsezgin]

Hi Community,

Our customer web site doesn't have any authenticated user. All users are anonymous.

Components have granite.jquery dependency so csrf protection is enabled automatically.

Dispatcher and publisher instance receiving too many unnecessary csrf token requests.

Is there any way to disable csrf protection on AEM 6.3?

Thanks in advance.

Mehmet

[arunpatidar]

Please check

The CSRF Protection Framework

you can add /content path in exclude filter at http://localhost:4504/system/console/configMgr/com.adobe.granite.csrf.impl.CSRFFilter

[mehmetsezgin]

Thanks Arun.

Publisher responds with empty token to csrf requests. Since users are not authenticated.

I think excluded path is used bypass csrf token check for certain destinations.

https://taylor.callsen.me/security-and-java-servlets-in-aem-6-1/

Our goal is stop browser's csrf token requests so dispatcher will not have to handle them.

[Jaideep_Brar]

It is not a recommendation to remove the token.json call as this token.json call is used to prevent CSRF attacks and removing this would lead to a major security risk. Please refer to the documentation at [1].

If you still want to remove the call, you need to remove all dependencies to "granite.jquery" in the code.

[1] https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/experience-manager/6-3/sites/developing/using/csrf-protection.html

[2] https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/6-5/forms/using/admin-help/preventing-csrf-attacks.html

[3] https://docs.adobe.com/content/help/en/experience-manager-dispatcher/using/configuring/configuring-d...

[mehmetsezgin]

Thanks JaideepBrar​.

As i mentioned CSRF framework is sending empty token to browser. For our case should we still keep token.json calls?

[Jaideep_Brar]

The CSRF filter/token mechanism only supports authenticated users. So, If you are hosting a static site without any login functionality, you can remove the token call.

Note that the Sling Referrer Filter offers a second layer of CSRF protection which works in all cases, authenticated or not. See Sling Referrer Filter section of security checklist [0] for reference

[0] https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/6-3/sites/administering/using/security-checklist.html

[himanshuj749478]

Hi arunpatidar26​ JaideepBrar​

How do I "remove the token call" for static publish environment? Like mentioned in the past - "excluding" it via filter is not same as removing the call.

Thanks

Himanshu

[arunpatidar]

You can write a redirect at apache server to return response of empty file when token.json is requested.

e.g.

RewriteEngine  on
RewriteRule   "^/libs/granite/csrf/token\.json$"  "/emptyfile.json" [PT]

[Mayukh007]

Hi Arun and Team,

@arunpatidar 

We have similar situation with token.json. our sites are mostly public and we dont need calls for token.json hit publisher. So we used your above solution to redirect call to a dummy json.

but now we have CUG pages in the site and we were validating if we need to bring back token.json for CUG pages.

Questions:

1. Even if now token.json returns dummy value, AEM still works in CUG pages...Shouldn't AEM stop accessing CUG page when my token.json value is wrong and does not match value in publisher (I assume token.json value gets checked in server side for CSRF prevention)

2. Can we completely get rid of token.json by removing Granite dependency for our CUG pages..? Does it really have any impact in terms of security..?

3. Also we are seeing granite.js getting loaded in publisher which we should not need in publisher...Can we stop granite.js to be loaded in publisher but still use token.json..?

[arunpatidar]

Hi,

We are using CUG and stick with token.json for 2 reasons -

1. CSRF preventions

2. Checking login status and based on token.josn response handling login/logout redirections.

you can update your condition and based on login-token cookie presents in the request header you can allow token.json 

e.g.

RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cookie} (^|;\ *)jforumUserId=([^;\ ]+)
RewriteCond %2 !=-1
RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R]

[Mayukh007]

Thank you for the response Arun..will try your solution