Question

A forensics investigator is examining a number of unauthorized payments that were reported on the company's website. Some unusual log entries show users received an email for an unwanted mailing list and clicked on a link to attempt to unsubscribe. One of the users reported the email to the phishing team, and the forwarded email revealed the link to be: ?routing=00001111 acct=22223334 amount=250 Click here to unsubscribe. Which of the following will the forensics investigator MOST likely determine has occurred?

1) SQL injection
2) Broken authentication
3) XSS
4) XSRE

Answer 1

The forensics investigator will likely conclude that Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF or XSRE) has occurred, as the malicious link performed an unauthorized transaction using the user's authenticated session without their knowledge.

Step-by-step explanation:

The forensics investigator is most likely to determine that a process known as Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF or XSRE) has occurred. This type of attack tricks a web user into performing an unwanted action on a web application to which they're already authenticated. The user receives a phishing email with a link, and upon clicking the link, an unauthorized action (such as transferring money) is performed using the user's authenticated session without their knowledge.

The link in the email with parameters like routing, acct, and amount indicate a financial transaction is being unknowingly triggered by clicking the link. This scenario doesn't match the patterns of SQL injection, which involves inserting malicious SQL statements into an input field for execution (e.g., to dump database contents). It is also not broken authentication (compromising user credentials or sessions), nor is it Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), which would involve injecting malicious scripts into web pages viewed by other users.