Do CSRF attacks apply to API's?

Question

I'm writing a Django RESTful API to back an iOS application, and I keep running into Django's CSRF protections whenever I write methods to deal with POST requests.

My understanding is that cookies managed by iOS are not shared by applications, meaning that my session cookies are safe, and no other application can ride on them. Is this true? If so, can I just mark all my API functions as CSRF-exempt?

Answer 1

That's not the purpose of CSRF protection. CSRF protection is to prevent direct posting of data to your site. In other words, the client must actually post through an approved path, i.e. view the form page, fill it out, submit the data.

An API pretty much precludes CSRF, because its entire purpose is generally to allow 3rd-party entities to access and manipulate data on your site (the "cross-site" in CSRF). So, yes, I think as a rule any API view should be CSRF exempt. However, you should still follow best practices and protect every API-endpoint that actually makes a change with some form of authentication, such as OAuth.

Answer 2

CSRF attacks rely on cookies being implicitly sent with all requests to a particular domain. If your API endpoints do not allow cookie-based authentication, you should be good.

Even if you do use cookie-based authentication, your cookies are safe because iOS apps do not share cookies. However, unless you intentionally block web browsers by requiring an unusual user-agent header, another party could build a browser-based app that uses your API, and that app would be vulnerable to CSRF attacks if your API supports cookie-based authentication and doesn't apply CSRF protection.