Issue

How do I enable CSRF protection?

Environment

CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise
CloudBees Operation Center

Resolution

GOTO: Jenkins > Manage Jenkins > Configure Global Security and enable Prevent Cross Site Request Forgery exploits.

Select Default Crumb Issuer from Crumb Algorithm and save to apply changes and enable.

See the CSRF Protection Wiki page for more.

Issue

How do I generate a crumb?

Environment

CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise
CloudBees Operation Center
wget
cURL

Resolution

Using wget

wget --user=admin --password=admin --auth-no-challenge -q --output-document - 'http://localhost:8080/crumbIssuer/api/xml?xpath=concat(//crumbRequestField,":",//crumb)'

The output is the crumb.

Parameters:

--user=<USERNAME>
--password=<PASSWORD_OR_API_TOKEN>

Replace http://localhost:8080 with your Jenkins URL.

Using cURL

curl -u "admin:admin" 'http://localhost:8080/crumbIssuer/api/xml?xpath=concat(//crumbRequestField,":",//crumb)'

The output is the crumb.

Parameters:

-u "<USERNAME>:<PASSWORD_OR_API_TOKEN>"

Replace http://localhost:8080 with your Jenkins URL.

Debugging Issues

I’m seeing the following response:

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"/>
<title>Error 404 Not Found</title>
</head>
<body><h2>HTTP ERROR 404</h2>
<p>Problem accessing /crumbIssuer/api/xml. Reason:
<pre>    Not Found</pre></p><hr /><i><small>Powered by Jetty://</small></i><br/>
...
...

CSRF Protection is not enabled. GOTO: Jenkins > Manage Jenkins > Configure Global Security and enable Prevent Cross Site Request Forgery exploits.

Issue

How do I use an issued crumb in an API call.

Environment

CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise
CloudBees Operation Center
cURL
wget

Resolution

Using wget

The following example retrieves a crumb and uses it to build a job called someJob.

# Replace with your Jenkins URL and admin credentials
SERVER="http://localhost:8080"
CRUMB=$(wget --user=admin --password=admin --auth-no-challenge -q --output-document - "$SERVER"/crumbIssuer/api/xml?xpath=concat\(//crumbRequestField,%22:%22,//crumb\))
wget --user=admin --password=admin --auth-no-challenge --header="$CRUMB" --post-data="" -q "$SERVER"/job/someJob/build

Parameters:

--user=<USERNAME>
--password=<PASSWORD_OR_API_TOKEN>
--header="<ISSUED_CRUMB_FOR_USER>"

Using cURL

The following example retrieves a crumb and uses it to build a job called someJob.

# Replace with your Jenkins URL and admin credentials
SERVER="http://localhost:8080"
CRUMB=$(curl -u "admin:admin" "$SERVER"/crumbIssuer/api/xml?xpath=concat\(//crumbRequestField,%22:%22,//crumb\))
curl -X POST -u "admin:admin" -H "$CRUMB" "$SERVER"/job/someJob/build

Parameters:

-u "<USERNAME>:<PASSWORD_OR_API_TOKEN>"
-H "<ISSUED_CRUMB_FOR_USER>"

Debugging Issues

I’m seeing the following response:

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"/>
<title>Error 403 No valid crumb was included in the request</title>
</head>
<body><h2>HTTP ERROR 403</h2>
<p>Problem accessing /job/someJob/build. Reason:
<pre>    No valid crumb was included in the request</pre></p><hr /><i><small>Powered by Jetty://</small></i><br/>
...
...

This is caused by an invalid crumb being used.

Issue

Does the crumb expire?

Environment

CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise
CloudBees Operation Center

Resolution

Once an user has received a crumb, it can re-used for all subsequent requests as long as this user stays in the same session. At code level, this dependency can be seen here.

Note :

Session may expire on its own depending on Jenkins settings.
Session might be aborted due to unexpected reasons, such as Failover of HA in CJP or SSO expiration
So generally keeping the same crumb is safe for short command sequences, but not for scripts running for several hours