For example, a JavaScript encoded string will execute even though it is JavaScript encoded. See Browser compatibility for up-to-date cross-browser support information.Key TermDOM-based cross-site scripting happens when data from a user controlled source (like user name, or redirect URL taken from the URL fragment) reaches a sink, which is a function like eval() or a property setter like .innerHTML, that can execute arbitrary JavaScript code. You can also debug the violations in the browser: Add the following HTTP Response header to documents that you want to migrate to Trusted Types. The data is subsequently read from the DOM by the web application and outputted to the browser. HTML Context refers to inserting a variable between two basic HTML tags like a
or . In the case above, the attribute name is an JavaScript event handler, so the attribute value is implicitly converted to JavaScript code and evaluated. document.CreateTextNode () and append it in the appropriate DOM location. For XSS attacks to be successful, an attacker needs to insert and execute malicious content in a webpage. These locations are known as dangerous contexts. After encoding the encodedValue variable will contain %22Quoted%20Value%20with%20spaces%20and%20%26%22. placed in an HTML Attribute. The encoder safe lists can be customized to include Unicode ranges appropriate to the app during startup, in Program.cs: For example, using the default configuration using a Razor HtmlHelper similar to the following: The preceding markup is rendered with Chinese text encoded: To widen the characters treated as safe by the encoder, insert the following line into Program.cs. For example, a numeric string containing only the characters 0-9 won't trigger an XSS attack. If your data gets URL-encoded before being processed, then an XSS attack is unlikely to work. Each variable used in the user interface should be passed through an output encoding function. Trusted Types give you the tools to write, security review, and maintain applications free of DOM XSS vulnerabilities by making the dangerous web API functions secure by default. To test for DOM-based cross-site scripting manually, you generally need to use a browser with developer tools, such as Chrome. Accelerate penetration testing - find more bugs, more quickly. However, this could be used by an attacker to subvert internal and external attributes of the myMapType object. Do your applications use this vulnerable package? Ensure JavaScript variables are quoted, JavaScript Hex Encoding, JavaScript Unicode Encoding, Avoid backslash encoding (. Your best bet is to use a vulnerability scanner with a DOM-based cross-site scripting detection module. In Chrome's developer tools, you can use Control+Shift+F (or Command+Alt+F on MacOS) to search all the page's JavaScript code for the source. In this section, we'll describe DOM-based cross-site scripting (DOM XSS), explain how to find DOM XSS vulnerabilities, and talk about how to exploit DOM XSS with different sources and sinks. For example: Modern web applications are typically built using a number of third-party libraries and frameworks, which often provide additional functions and capabilities for developers. Try to refactor your code to remove references to unsafe sinks like innerHTML, and instead use textContent or value. Other CSS Contexts are unsafe and you should not place variable data in them. jQuery used to be extremely popular, and a classic DOM XSS vulnerability was caused by websites using this selector in conjunction with the location.hash source for animations or auto-scrolling to a particular element on the page. For example: To make dynamic updates to HTML in the DOM safe, we recommend: The HTML attribute subcontext within the execution context is divergent from the standard encoding rules. If you're using JavaScript for writing to HTML, look at the .textContent attribute as it is a Safe Sink and will automatically HTML Entity Encode. Just using a string will fail, as the browser doesn't know if the data is trustworthy:Don'tanElement.innerHTML = location.href; With Trusted Types enabled, the browser throws a TypeError and prevents use of a DOM XSS sink with a string. There are two distinct groups of cross-site scripting. As HTML attribute encoding is a superset of HTML encoding this means you don't have to concern yourself with whether you should use HTML encoding or HTML attribute encoding. Record your progression from Apprentice to Expert. How to detect DOM-based cross-site scripting? There are numerous methods which implicitly eval() data passed to it that must be avoided. To use the configurable encoders via DI your constructors should take an HtmlEncoder, JavaScriptEncoder and UrlEncoder parameter as appropriate. By default encoders use a safe list limited to the Basic Latin Unicode range and encode all characters outside of that range as their character code equivalents. Safe list ranges are specified as Unicode code charts, not languages. DOMPurify supports Trusted Types and will return sanitized HTML wrapped in a TrustedHTML object such that the browser does not generate a violation.CautionIf the sanitization logic in DOMPurify is buggy, your application might still have a DOM XSS vulnerability. It allows an attacker to circumvent the same origin policy, which is designed to segregate different websites from each other. Thankfully, many sinks where variables can be placed are safe. OWASP recommends these in all circumstances. Make sure any attributes are fully quoted, same as JS and CSS. Frameworks make it easy to ensure variables are correctly validated and escaped or sanitised. Reflected and Stored XSS are server side injection issues while DOM based XSS is a client (browser) side injection issue. If you have to use user input on your page, always use it in the text context, never as HTML tags or any other potential code. DOM-based vulnerabilities occur in the content processing stage performed on the client, typically in client-side JavaScript. It will not always prevent XSS. For example, websites often reflect URL parameters in the HTML response from the server. WAFs also dont address the root cause of an XSS vulnerability. This type of attack is explained in detail in the following article: DOM XSS: An Explanation of DOM-based Cross-site Scripting. Acunetix Web Application Vulnerability Report 2020, How To Prevent DOM-based Cross-site Scripting, DOM XSS: An Explanation of DOM-based Cross-site Scripting, Types of XSS: Stored XSS, Reflected XSS, and DOM-based XSS, Finding the Source of a DOM-based XSS Vulnerability with Acunetix, Read about other types of cross-site scripting attacks. Get help and advice from our experts on all things Burp. Now, no matter how complex your web application is, the only thing that can introduce a DOM XSS vulnerability, is the code in one of your policies - and you can lock that down even more by limiting policy creation. WAFs are unreliable and new bypass techniques are being discovered regularly. Note that the browser's "View source" option won't work for DOM XSS testing because it doesn't take account of changes that have been performed in the HTML by JavaScript. For many years DOM XSS has been one of the most prevalentand dangerousweb security vulnerabilities. A script on the page then processes the reflected data in an unsafe way, ultimately writing it to a dangerous sink. Please look at the OWASP Java Encoder JavaScript encoding examples for examples of proper JavaScript use that requires minimal encoding. Cross-site scripting ( XSS) vulnerabilities first became known through the CERT Advisory CA-2000-02 (Malicious HTML Tags Embedded in Client Web Requests), although these vulnerabilities had been exploited before. DOM-based XSS attacks seek to exploit the DOM in a simple two step process: Create a Source: Inject a malicious script into a property found to be suceptible to DOM-based XSS attacks. In many cases, JavaScript encoding does not stop attacks within an execution context. There are three types of XSS attacks: stored, reflected and Document Object Model (DOM) based. Read the entire Acunetix Web Application Vulnerability Report. Another option provided by Gaz (Gareth) was to use a specific code construct to limit mutability with anonymous closures. Untrusted data is any data that may be controlled by an attacker, HTML form inputs, query strings, HTTP headers, even data sourced from a database as an attacker may be able to breach your database even if they cannot breach your application. If data is read from a user-controlled source like the URL, then passed to the attr() function, then it may be possible to manipulate the value sent to cause XSS. For example, you can use DOMPurify to sanitize an HTML snippet, removing XSS payloads. A DOM-based XSS attack> is possible if the web application writes data to the Document Object Model without proper sanitization. The most common source for DOM XSS is the URL, which is typically accessed with the window.location object. It contains well written, well thought and well explained computer science and programming articles, quizzes and practice/competitive programming/company interview Questions. Don't use untrusted input as part of a URL path. The line above could have possibly worked to render a link. Always encode untrusted input before output, no matter what validation or sanitization has been performed. Tag helpers will also encode input you use in tag parameters. JavaScript encoding takes dangerous characters for JavaScript and replaces them with their hex, for example < would be encoded as \u003C. If you have to use user input on your page, always use it in the text context, never as HTML tags or any other potential code. HTML encoding takes characters such as < and changes them into a safe form like < Before putting untrusted data into an HTML attribute ensure it's HTML encoded. Additionally, the website's scripts might perform validation or other processing of data that must be accommodated when attempting to exploit a vulnerability. Start with using your frameworks default output encoding protection when you wish to display data as the user typed it in. With these sinks, your input doesn't necessarily appear anywhere within the DOM, so you can't search for it. Script manipulation: <script src> and setting text content of <script> elements. How common is DOM-based cross-site scripting? The application logic returns an unsafe input as part of the response without rendering it safely or storing data generated by users. Get started with Burp Suite Professional. HTML Sanitization will strip dangerous HTML from a variable and return a safe string of HTML. XSS is serious and can lead to account impersonation, observing user behaviour, loading external content, stealing sensitive data, and more. The defined rules will HTML-escape < characters to prevent the creation of new HTML elements. Java Encoder is an active project providing supports for HTML, CSS and JavaScript encoding. Different sources and sinks have various properties and behaviors that can impact exploitability, and determine what methods are used. Customization of the safe list only affects encoders sourced via DI. (It's free!). Its the same with computer security. Here are the proper security techniques to use to prevent XSS attacks: Sanitize outputs properly. Before putting untrusted data into a URL query string ensure it's URL encoded. element.SetAttribute () element [attribute]= Please insert your password to refresh your session. The HTML parser of the rendering context dictates how data is presented and laid out on the page and can be further broken down into the standard contexts of HTML, HTML attribute, URL, and CSS. The majority of DOM XSS vulnerabilities can be found quickly and reliably using Burp Suite's web vulnerability scanner. A list of output encoding libraries is included in the appendix. A rendering context is associated with the parsing of HTML tags and their attributes. Semgrep rule to identify above dom xss link. In principle, a website is vulnerable to DOM-based cross-site scripting if there is an executable path via which data can propagate from source to sink. In many cases the context isn't always straightforward to discern. We are looking for web developers to participate in user research, product testing, discussion groups and more. In other words, add a level of indirection between untrusted input and specified object properties. For example if you want to use user input to write in a div tag element don't use innerHtml, instead use innerText or textContent. HTML attribute encoding is a superset of HTML encoding and encodes additional characters such as " and '. When a site uses the ng-app attribute on an HTML element, it will be processed by AngularJS. The doubleJavaScriptEncodedData has its first layer of JavaScript encoding reversed (upon execution) in the single quotes. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is a security vulnerability that allows an attacker to inject malicious code into a web page viewed by other users. Some XSS vulnerabilities are caused by the server-side code that insecurely creates the HTML code forming the website. Policies are factories for Trusted Types that enforce certain security rules on their input: This code creates a policy called myEscapePolicy that can produce TrustedHTML objects via its createHTML() function. Here are some examples of encoded values for specific characters. The primary difference is where the attack is injected into the application. The best way to fix DOM based cross-site scripting is to use the right output method (sink). Each parser has distinct and separate semantics in the way they can possibly execute script code which make creating consistent rules for mitigating vulnerabilities in various contexts difficult. Consider adopting the following controls in addition to the above. The web application dynamically generates a web page that contains this untrusted data. Doing so encourages designs in which the security rules are close to the data that they process, where you have the most context to correctly sanitize the value. DOM-based Cross-site Scripting (DOM XSS) is a particular type of a Cross-site Scripting vulnerability. This logically seems to be prudent advice as the JavaScript parser does not understand HTML encoding. The attacker can manipulate this data to include XSS content on the webpage, for example, malicious JavaScript code. Because the data was introduced in JavaScript code and passed to a URL subcontext the appropriate server-side encoding would be the following: Or if you were using ECMAScript 5 with an immutable JavaScript client-side encoding libraries you could do the following: There are a number of open source encoding libraries out there: Some work on a block list while others ignore important characters like "<" and ">". More info about Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge. One of the simplest ways of doing this is to deliver your exploit via an iframe: In this example, the src attribute points to the vulnerable page with an empty hash value. This is the appropriate step to take when outputting data in a rendering context, however using HTML Attribute encoding in an execution context will break the application display of data. Sometimes users need to author HTML. It is difficult to detect DOM-based cross-site scripting because very often it leaves no mark on the server at all (for example, in server logs) the whole attack happens in the client. Since then, it has extended to include injection of basically any content, but we still refer to this as XSS. It is the process of converting untrusted . In order to understand DOM based XSS, one needs to see the fundamental difference between Reflected and Stored XSS when compared to DOM based XSS. At a basic level XSS works by tricking your application into inserting a