Explain the concept of 'Same-Origin Policy' and its relationship with CSRF attacks.
The Same-Origin Policy (SOP) is a critical security mechanism implemented in web browsers to isolate resources retrieved from different origins, preventing potential malicious interference. It stipulates that scripts can only access data and properties of other documents from the same origin.
In relation to CSRF attacks, SOP plays an essential role as it’s designed to prevent such threats. However, it doesn’t entirely eliminate them. CSRF exploits the trust a site has for a user, tricking the browser into executing unwanted actions on their behalf. While SOP restricts direct access to data across domains, it doesn’t block requests sent to another domain. Therefore, if a user is authenticated on a site, a CSRF attack could forge a request to that site, which would be executed with the user’s privileges due to the inherent trust model of the web.
This highlights the importance of additional protective measures against CSRF beyond SOP, like anti-CSRF tokens or same-site cookies, which provide further layers of defense by ensuring that requests are only accepted from legitimate sources.
