How to properly add cross-site request forgery (CSRF) token using PHP

Question

I am trying to add some security to the forms on my website. One of the forms uses AJAX and the other is a straightforward "contact us" form. I'm trying to add a CSRF token. The problem I'm having is that the token is only showing up in the HTML "value" some of the time. The rest of the time, the value is empty. Here is the code I am using on the AJAX form:

PHP:

if (!isset($_SESSION)) {
    session_start();
$_SESSION['formStarted'] = true;
}
if (!isset($_SESSION['token']))
{$token = md5(uniqid(rand(), TRUE));
$_SESSION['token'] = $token;

}

HTML

 <form>
//...
<input type="hidden" name="token" value="<?php echo $token; ?>" />
//...
</form>

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

For security code, please don't generate your tokens this way: $token = md5(uniqid(rand(), TRUE));

• rand() is predictable
• uniqid() only adds up to 29 bits of entropy
• md5() doesn't add entropy, it just mixes it deterministically

Try this out:

Generating a CSRF Token

PHP 7

session_start();
if (empty($_SESSION['token'])) {
    $_SESSION['token'] = bin2hex(random_bytes(32));
}
$token = $_SESSION['token'];

Sidenote: One of my employer's open source projects is an initiative to backport random_bytes() and random_int() into PHP 5 projects. It's MIT licensed and available on Github and Composer as paragonie/random_compat.

PHP 5.3+ (or with ext-mcrypt)

session_start();
if (empty($_SESSION['token'])) {
    if (function_exists('mcrypt_create_iv')) {
        $_SESSION['token'] = bin2hex(mcrypt_create_iv(32, MCRYPT_DEV_URANDOM));
    } else {
        $_SESSION['token'] = bin2hex(openssl_random_pseudo_bytes(32));
    }
}
$token = $_SESSION['token'];

Verifying the CSRF Token

Don't just use == or even ===, use hash_equals() (PHP 5.6+ only, but available to earlier versions with the hash-compat library).

if (!empty($_POST['token'])) {
    if (hash_equals($_SESSION['token'], $_POST['token'])) {
         // Proceed to process the form data
    } else {
         // Log this as a warning and keep an eye on these attempts
    }
}

---

Going Further with Per-Form Tokens

You can further restrict tokens to only be available for a particular form by using hash_hmac(). HMAC is a particular keyed hash function that is safe to use, even with weaker hash functions (e.g. MD5). However, I recommend using the SHA-2 family of hash functions instead.

First, generate a second token for use as an HMAC key, then use logic like this to render it:

<input type="hidden" name="token" value="<?php
    echo hash_hmac('sha256', '/my_form.php', $_SESSION['second_token']);
?>" />

And then using a congruent operation when verifying the token:

$calc = hash_hmac('sha256', '/my_form.php', $_SESSION['second_token']);
if (hash_equals($calc, $_POST['token'])) {
    // Continue...
}

The tokens generated for one form cannot be reused in another context without knowing $_SESSION['second_token']. It is important that you use a separate token as an HMAC key than the one you just drop on the page.

Bonus: Hybrid Approach + Twig Integration

Anyone who uses the Twig templating engine can benefit from a simplified dual strategy by adding this filter to their Twig environment:

$twigEnv->addFunction(
    new \Twig_SimpleFunction(
        'form_token',
        function($lock_to = null) {
            if (empty($_SESSION['token'])) {
                $_SESSION['token'] = bin2hex(random_bytes(32));
            }
            if (empty($_SESSION['token2'])) {
                $_SESSION['token2'] = random_bytes(32);
            }
            if (empty($lock_to)) {
                return $_SESSION['token'];
            }
            return hash_hmac('sha256', $lock_to, $_SESSION['token2']);
        }
    )
);

With this Twig function, you can use both the general purpose tokens like so:

<input type="hidden" name="token" value="{{ form_token() }}" />

Or the locked down variant:

<input type="hidden" name="token" value="{{ form_token('/my_form.php') }}" />

Twig is only concerned with template rendering; you still must validate the tokens properly. In my opinion, the Twig strategy offers greater flexibility and simplicity, while maintaining the possibility for maximum security.

---

Single-Use CSRF Tokens

If you have a security requirement that each CSRF token is allowed to be usable exactly once, the simplest strategy regenerate it after each successful validation. However, doing so will invalidate every previous token which doesn't mix well with people who browse multiple tabs at once.

Paragon Initiative Enterprises maintains an Anti-CSRF library for these corner cases. It works with one-use per-form tokens, exclusively. When enough tokens are stored in the session data (default configuration: 65535), it will cycle out the oldest unredeemed tokens first.