The importance of preventing a cross site scripting (XSS) attack

importance of preventing a cross site scripting (XSS) attack

You head into work as usual and relax with your morning cup of coffee. You decide to look at your company website as you like to keep a tab on everything that’s going on and enjoy seeing updates, as you know how vital it is to keep your customers interested.

For some reason, something is not right with the site. You are no expert in the field of IT, but you detect a problem when an unfamiliar link is appearing. You ring downstairs and your chief security engineer gives you the news that you are the victims of a cross site scripting (XSS) attack. Your expert gives you a rundown and explains how a cross site scripting cheat sheet can prevent further attacks.

What Is a cross site scripting (XSS) attack

XSS is an attack where the vulnerability within a website is attacked through the injection of a malicious code which can cause mayhem to the system. It is extremely dangerous to the security of the organisation affected as it can be used to steal information on session authentication and cookies and even worse, to capture and modify passwords.

Once such a hack is performed, it will compromise a whole range of information, which can include stealing customer details and all their privacy. The full effect of which can be catastrophic to a business with a loss of confidence and even worse legal action. It’s quite a lot for you to take in, even though you totally understand the net result, so you decide that to get a better grasp, you will look at tips for building a website.

Two types of XSS attack

A reflected XSS attack will rely on a system not being fitted with the right security to eliminate scripts or other embedded objects as it fails to sanitize requests. An attacker will get a user to click on a link in an email or malicious website in such an attack, which sees the vulnerable website fails to strip away through its sanitization process which then sees the script bounce off the site and onto the user’s computer.

Alternatively, a stored XSS attack, while less common, can be far more dangerous as they are usually unidentified with a website storing information in a public place such as social media, which allow an un-sanitized HTML to be embedded in the site that visitors view, allowing the data to be hacked. Maybe some of the exhibits at a museum overcame such issues.

Cross site scripting is a serious threat which can disrupt the life of people and full organisations as sensitive data is stolen, such as cookies which can allow an attacker to copy the session of a user and giving them the same access as that person.

How to stop such attacks

The simplest way is to install the best DevOps software development, founded by a former professional hacker, which will offer a safeguard and immediately provide information whenever an attack is attempted and offer solutions to fix the issue immediately.