Dave ([info]cerealnumber) wrote,
@ 2009-05-03 17:03:00
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Entry tags:csrf, netflix, security, stolen-thoughts, technical

Netflix CSRF - Stolen Thoughts

Looking at the HTTP traffic of Netflix under Fiddler I could see the HTTP request that added a movie to my queue and didn't see anything obvious that would prevent a CSRF. Sure enough its pretty easy to create a page that, if the user has set Netflix to auto-login, will add movies to the user's queue without their knowledge. I thought this was pretty neat, because I could finally get people to watch Primer. However, when I searched for Netflix CSRF I found that this issue has been known and reported to Netflix since 2006. Again my thoughts stolen from me and the theif doesn't even have the common decency to let me have the thought first!

With this issue known for nearly three years its hard to continue calling it an issue. Really they should just document it in their API docs and be done with it. Who knows what Netflix based web sites and services they'll break if they try to change this behavior? For instance, follow this link to add my Netflix recommended movies to your queue.




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[info]trentm
2009-05-04 05:16 am UTC (link)
Wow. Could you find out what movies were in someone's Netflix cue, without their knowledge?

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[info]cerealnumber
2009-05-04 05:37 am UTC (link)
Probably not or at least not easily through this method. With a cross site request forgery attack, generally the attacker only gets to do something the website lets the user do normally (add a movie to their queue), the difference being the attacker does it without the user's knowledge and the attacker doesn't get to see or interact with the result.

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