CWE-83

Mitigation

Phase: Implementation

Description:

• Carefully check each input parameter against a rigorous positive specification (allowlist) defining the specific characters and format allowed. All input should be neutralized, not just parameters that the user is supposed to specify, but all data in the request, including tag attributes, hidden fields, cookies, headers, the URL itself, and so forth. A common mistake that leads to continuing XSS vulnerabilities is to validate only fields that are expected to be redisplayed by the site. We often encounter data from the request that is reflected by the application server or the application that the development team did not anticipate. Also, a field that is not currently reflected may be used by a future developer. Therefore, validating ALL parts of the HTTP request is recommended.

Mitigation ID: MIT-30.1

Phase: Implementation

Strategy: Output Encoding

Description:

• Use and specify an output encoding that can be handled by the downstream component that is reading the output. Common encodings include ISO-8859-1, UTF-7, and UTF-8. When an encoding is not specified, a downstream component may choose a different encoding, either by assuming a default encoding or automatically inferring which encoding is being used, which can be erroneous. When the encodings are inconsistent, the downstream component might treat some character or byte sequences as special, even if they are not special in the original encoding. Attackers might then be able to exploit this discrepancy and conduct injection attacks; they even might be able to bypass protection mechanisms that assume the original encoding is also being used by the downstream component.
• The problem of inconsistent output encodings often arises in web pages. If an encoding is not specified in an HTTP header, web browsers often guess about which encoding is being used. This can open up the browser to subtle XSS attacks.

Mitigation ID: MIT-43

Phase: Implementation

Description:

• With Struts, write all data from form beans with the bean's filter attribute set to true.

Mitigation ID: MIT-31

Phase: Implementation

Strategy: Attack Surface Reduction

Description:

• To help mitigate XSS attacks against the user's session cookie, set the session cookie to be HttpOnly. In browsers that support the HttpOnly feature (such as more recent versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox), this attribute can prevent the user's session cookie from being accessible to malicious client-side scripts that use document.cookie. This is not a complete solution, since HttpOnly is not supported by all browsers. More importantly, XMLHTTPRequest and other powerful browser technologies provide read access to HTTP headers, including the Set-Cookie header in which the HttpOnly flag is set.

CAPEC-243: XSS Targeting HTML Attributes

An adversary inserts commands to perform cross-site scripting (XSS) actions in HTML attributes. Many filters do not adequately sanitize attributes against the presence of potentially dangerous commands even if they adequately sanitize tags. For example, dangerous expressions could be inserted into a style attribute in an anchor tag, resulting in the execution of malicious code when the resulting page is rendered. If a victim is tricked into viewing the rendered page the attack proceeds like a normal XSS attack, possibly resulting in the loss of sensitive cookies or other malicious activities.

CAPEC-244: XSS Targeting URI Placeholders

An attack of this type exploits the ability of most browsers to interpret "data", "javascript" or other URI schemes as client-side executable content placeholders. This attack consists of passing a malicious URI in an anchor tag HREF attribute or any other similar attributes in other HTML tags. Such malicious URI contains, for example, a base64 encoded HTML content with an embedded cross-site scripting payload. The attack is executed when the browser interprets the malicious content i.e., for example, when the victim clicks on the malicious link.

CAPEC-588: DOM-Based XSS

This type of attack is a form of Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) where a malicious script is inserted into the client-side HTML being parsed by a web browser. Content served by a vulnerable web application includes script code used to manipulate the Document Object Model (DOM). This script code either does not properly validate input, or does not perform proper output encoding, thus creating an opportunity for an adversary to inject a malicious script launch a XSS attack. A key distinction between other XSS attacks and DOM-based attacks is that in other XSS attacks, the malicious script runs when the vulnerable web page is initially loaded, while a DOM-based attack executes sometime after the page loads. Another distinction of DOM-based attacks is that in some cases, the malicious script is never sent to the vulnerable web server at all. An attack like this is guaranteed to bypass any server-side filtering attempts to protect users.