Designed to exploit the domain cookie trust model, CSRF attacks essentially take advantage of the trust the Web application has in its authenticated users, says Subu Ramanathan, principal consultant with Security Compass.
“In order to execute this attack, a user would have to navigate to a malicious website while logged into the victim Web application,” says Ramanathan. “The malicious website, being designed to attack users of the victim application, would make [requests] to complete sensitive transactions on the victim application on behalf of the user behind the scenes.”