A victim is logged onto a popular home router forum site in order to troubleshoot some router
configuration issues. The router is a fairly standard configuration and has an IP address of
192.168.1.1. The victim is logged into their router administrative interface in one tab and clicks a
forum link in another tab. Due to clicking the forum link, the home router reboots. Which of the
following attacks MOST likely occurred?

A.
Brute force password attack

B.
Cross-site request forgery

C.
Cross-site scripting

D.
Fuzzing

Explanation:
Cross-Site Request Forgery—also known as XSRF, session riding, and one-click attack—involves
unauthorized commands coming from a trusted user to the website. This is often done without the
user’s knowledge, and it employs some type of social networking to pull it off. For example,
assume that Evan and Spencer are chatting through Facebook. Spencer sends Evan a link to
what he purports is a funny video that will crack him up. Evan clicks the link, but it actually brings
up Evan’s bank account information in another browser tab, takes a screenshot of it, closes the
tab, and sends the information to Spencer. The reason the attack is possible is because Evan is a
trusted user with his own bank. In order for it to work, Evan would need to have recently accessed

that bank’s website and have a cookie that had yet to expire. The best protection against crosssite scripting is to disable the running of scripts (and browser profi les).