What is Cross-Site Scripting

3 min readSep 11, 2023

The second most commonly exploited web vulnerability is Cross-Site Scripting (SQL Injection being the first). Cross-Site Scripting, also known as XSS is an injection-type web application vulnerability, which occurs mainly when a web application allows the user-supplied data to be actively displayed and rendered on a webpage without proper escaping or encoding.

Unlike SQL Injection, this vulnerability affects the user instead of the web application. In this chapter, we will understand what Scripting is, and then move on to Cross-Site Scripting Attacks.

Scripting

Gone are the days when websites were pure static pages in pure HTML pages. Present-day websites are driven by dynamic content, with JavaScript (or VBScript) being used along with HTML. Scripting is enabled by default in most browsers, to have a better sense of interaction with the user.

The JavaScript is run on the client side of the browser to provide interactivity to the user.

However, in some cases, it may pose a security risk too, where malicious scripts are embedded on behalf of legitimate websites, to compromise the user’s security.

Let's take a legitimate example, where the content of a webpage is modified using Javascript :

<html>

<head>

function hello(){

document.write(“Hello World”);

}

</script>

</head>

<body>

<button type=”button” onclick=”hello()”>Hello</button>

</body>

</html>

When the web browser would run the webpage, we would get the webpage to be like this.

On clicking the button, it will display the text “HelloWorld”. This is the most basic example of Scripting using Javascript functions.

Just like this example, in Cross-Site Scripting attacks, a script is used to perform malicious actions on behalf of the user. To add more, the spams, that you get to see on famous Social Networking websites these days, most of them are an example of XSS.

Attack Overview

Cross-Site Scripting attacks are flaws in the website, that allow client-supplied data to be used in the web application without proper encoding or escaping. Attackers embed their scripts in webpages, which returns the embedded content without any modification, thus making the script to be executed on the client side.

The expression “cross-site scripting” originally referred to the act of loading scripts from third-party web applications to a targeted domain.

An XSS could be used by an attacker to :

• Steal the cookies of an authenticated user

• Capture the key logs of the user

• Screen and CursorJacking

• Getting full access to the client’s system

• BlackHat Advertising

• Website Defacement

• Immediate Redirect to a malicious website

Cross-site scripting attacks usually take place in two steps –

a. A malicious request is sent to the web server

b. The web server then responds with the supplied input without properly encoding it, thus allowing the script to execute in the client’s browser.