Content-Security-Policy (CSP)
A content security policy (CSP) provides the aid for protecting a website as well as the site visitors from data injection and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) exploits take place in conditions where hackers take advantage of a security glitch for uploading malicious scripts to different websites which then are downloaded to a browser of a victim.
XSS marks their benefits of the flaws in a specific content management system that further allows different unexpected inputs to be put in due to the insufficient user input file sanitization. An XSS attack can further be used for stealing passwords or as a part of a multi-step hacking event.
Injection Attacks
Injection attacks are described as a serious security risk by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). The injection is considered as an attempt of an attacker for sending data to an application in a way that further changes the commands’ meaning that is being sent to an interpreter. Often such interpreters run with lots of access, and so easily a successful attack can result in significant data breaches, or even a browser’s, service’s, application’s loss of control. Catering it together, injection attacks take in a huge percentage of the serious application security risk. It is to be seen that the content security policy doesn’t 100% protect a site from attacks by itself but it does assist in diminishing the possibility of a cross-site scripting attack.
Strict-Transport-Security Header (HSTS)
This is also called the HTTP Strict Transport Security Header (HSTS). Numerous websites only acquire a 301 redirect from HTTP to HTTPS. But, this is not considered to be enough for keeping the website secure since the website is seen to be still vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. An attacker is prevented from downloading the HTTPS connection to an HTTP connection, by HSTS which then further allows the attacker to be benefited from the insecure redirects.
X-Content-Type-Options
With the use of such a security header, certain kinds of exploits that can take place are stopped, e.g. through malicious user-generated content. Browsers will be able to sniff in conditions where content is an image, a movie, HTML, JavaScript, text, or other content types that could be downloaded from a website.
A browser gets an allowance through sniffing to download the webpage elements and then correctly render them, particularly in the situations where the browser and metadata meet a need to render the missing element. Sniffing allows the browser into figuring out what is the element and later renders that element. However, hackers will try their best to trick the browsers to think that a harmful JavaScript file in real is an image which then allows the browser to further download the file and later execute the file, which will cause numerous sorts of negative outcomes for the visitor of that site.
The X-Content-Type-Options header can stop that and different other attacks that are related to the same thing by disabling the browsers’ ability to “sniff” the content type.
X-Frame-Options
The X-Frame-Options security header assists in stopping click-jacking attacks. Clickjacking is described by Mozilla as the practice of tricking a user into clicking into some link button that is not what it is shown to the user. This further can be used for stealing the login credentials for getting the unwitting permission of the user for installing a malware piece.
The working of the X-Frame-Options is done by the prevention of a webpage from being rendered for example, within an iframe. But, it presents the prevention from more than just the iframe-based attacks.
Frame sniffing further is defined by Microsoft as an attack technique that intakes the browser functionality’s transfer to steal the data from a particular website. While to this attack, a different web application that comes with an allowance of their content to have to host in a cross-domain IFRAME is considered to be vulnerable.
The X-Frame-Options header can further be used for controlling the factor of the page replacement in an IFRAME. Since the technique of Framesniffing relies on being able to place the victim site in an IFRAME, a website application might further be able to protect itself by sending an X-Frame-Options header that is appropriate.
The X-Frame-Options header plays an important role in protecting site visitors and the reputation of a site. The X-Frame-Options header is also a vital security measure that is important for implementation.
Referrer-Policy
A referrer policy header is something that grants authority to a website publisher to limit the amount of information that is sent to a website visitor when he/she visits a link. The visitor’s browser sends the information about which web page provided that link. The publisher receives the information about the site visitors from the server log. There have been cases where some sensitive information got leaked through the URL of a site referring a visitor to another visitor. That’s where the referrer policy comes in. Website publishers have control over the amount of information that gets through to the user, which could either be no information at all or everything that the site contains including the whole URL string.
