How can developers mitigate CSRF attacks?

Mitigating Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks is essential for maintaining the integrity and security of web applications. The most effective method among the options is the use of anti-CSRF tokens. This technique involves generating unique tokens that are associated with user sessions and embedding these tokens within forms. When a user submits a form, the server verifies that the token provided matches the expected token for that session.

This validation process ensures that any form submission comes from a legitimate source, as the attacker would be unable to forge the token. By requiring these tokens to be included in each state-changing request, developers can significantly reduce the risk of CSRF attacks since any request lacking a valid token can be easily rejected by the server.

Other options may address different aspects of security but do not specifically target the unique vulnerabilities that CSRF exploits. For instance, using simple passwords does not prevent a malicious user from forging requests if they have managed to trick an authenticated user into executing an action on their behalf. Increasing user session limits might even exacerbate the issue by keeping sessions alive longer, increasing the potential window for CSRF attacks. While encrypting server responses is a good practice for protecting data in transit, it does not serve to validate the origin of the