In this new post to his site, Pádraic Brady looks at two methods for generating CSRF (cross-site request forgery) tokens to help protect your application. It's not a tutorial, per se...more of a comparison of two methods: stateful and stateless CSRF tokens.

The difference between Stateful and Stateless CSRF defences is that the former requires storing the CSRF token on the server (i.e. session data) while the latter does not, i.e. the server has zero record of any CSRF tokens. As far as the server is concerned, the number of parties with persistent knowledge of a valid token is reduced to just one – the client. [...] Let’s compare both types of CSRF protections.

He introduces the concepts behind both types of token generation, pointing out that most of the PHP frameworks out there rely on the stateful option (the "synchronizer" method). The other method ("double submit") actually involves two tokens, one in the POST content and the other as a cookie value. He also dissects this other stateless concept article he found and how its method of generation may not be ideal.

Like most attacks, CSRF does not exist in isolation so developing a good defence requires mitigating other attacks. [...] Any good CSRF token implementation, whether stateful or stateless, should reflect those requirements with features for limiting tokens by scope and time.