Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Hacking Front-End Apps
Search
Alex Sexton
February 12, 2014
Technology
3
2.4k
Hacking Front-End Apps
My talk on client side web security as given at the jQuery Conference 2014 in San Diego
Alex Sexton
February 12, 2014
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Alex Sexton
See All by Alex Sexton
Your Very Own Component Library
slexaxton
5
740
Front-End Ops - jQuery Conf Chicago 2014
slexaxton
1
1k
Practicing Safe Script
slexaxton
18
2.8k
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
How to Quickly Call American Airlines®️ U.S. Customer Care : Full Guide
flyaahelpguide
0
240
Frontier Airlines Customer®️ USA Contact Numbers: Complete 2025 Support Guide
frontierairlineswithflyagent
0
100
ABEMAの本番環境負荷試験への挑戦
mk2taiga
5
1.3k
今だから言えるセキュリティLT_Wordpress5.7.2未満を一斉アップデートせよ
cuebic9bic
2
170
Transformerを用いたアイテム間の 相互影響を考慮したレコメンドリスト生成
recruitengineers
PRO
2
500
三視点LLMによる複数観点レビュー
mhlyc
0
240
AIでテストプロセス自動化に挑戦する
sakatakazunori
1
560
Digitization部 紹介資料
sansan33
PRO
1
4.5k
american aa airlines®️ USA Contact Numbers: Complete 2025 Support Guide
aaguide
0
500
データ駆動経営の道しるべ:プロダクト開発指標の戦略的活用法
ham0215
2
150
[SRE NEXT 2025] すみずみまで暖かく照らすあなたの太陽でありたい
carnappopper
2
500
Introduction to Bill One Development Engineer
sansan33
PRO
0
270
Featured
See All Featured
Fireside Chat
paigeccino
37
3.5k
The Language of Interfaces
destraynor
158
25k
Connecting the Dots Between Site Speed, User Experience & Your Business [WebExpo 2025]
tammyeverts
8
340
Raft: Consensus for Rubyists
vanstee
140
7k
Bash Introduction
62gerente
613
210k
The Art of Programming - Codeland 2020
erikaheidi
54
13k
Build your cross-platform service in a week with App Engine
jlugia
231
18k
Rebuilding a faster, lazier Slack
samanthasiow
83
9.1k
Why You Should Never Use an ORM
jnunemaker
PRO
58
9.5k
The Myth of the Modular Monolith - Day 2 Keynote - Rails World 2024
eileencodes
26
2.9k
Automating Front-end Workflow
addyosmani
1370
200k
Into the Great Unknown - MozCon
thekraken
40
1.9k
Transcript
Hacking Front-End Apps Alex Sexton
I work at .
which is in . California
but…
I live in . Texas
The web has a lot in common with Texas.
“The wild west.”
In 1985, Texas had a problem.
None
Littering
Some Texans defended their “God-given right to litter.”
ಠ_ಠ
There were fines for littering.
photo by Curtis Gregory Perry
But no one seemed to care.
The state tried some slogans.
None
But these slogans apparently did not resonate with the core
offenders
Males 18-24 “Bubbas in Pickup Trucks”
In 1985 Texas tried a new campaign:
None
The campaign reduced litter on Texas highways ! 72% !
from 1986 to 1990.
My point is…
“Hey everyone, you should make your websites more secure because
it’s important.” ! Probably isn’t going to do the trick.
DON’T! MESS! WITH! XSS Also probably won’t work.
Web developers, not security researchers, are the core audience.
Web security is hard.
“All you have to do is never make a single
mistake.” - I Think Mike West
“I discount the probability of perfection.” - Alex Russell
Content Injection
None
None
None
Everyone has a friend that always seems to pick “<script>alert(‘hacked!’);</script>”
as their username.
My User Agent
My Friend, Mike Taylor’s User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac
OS X 10.9; rv:25.0) <script>alert(‘lol’);</script> Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0
My Friend, Mike Taylor’s User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac
OS X 10.9; rv:25.0) <script>alert(‘lol’);</script> Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0
ಠ_ಠ
Samy
None
None
None
ಠ_ಠ
So let’s just detect malicious scripts!
None
alert(1)
The Billy Hoffman Whitespace Attack <script> ! </script>
The Billy Hoffman Whitespace Attack <script> ! </script> Malicious
Code
The Billy Hoffman Whitespace Attack <script> ! </script> tab
tab tab space space
The Billy Hoffman Whitespace Attack <script> ! </script> 1
1 1 0 0
You cannot detect malicious code.
output.replace(/<script>/, ‘’);
CSS Hacks
Old School
None
Link Visited Link getComputedStyle( getComputedStyle( ) ) === \o\|o|/o/ Pretty
much People Celebrating (or screaming on fire)
Timing Attacks
Security by Inaccuracy
requestAnimationFrame + :visited = ಠ_ಠ
requestAnimationFrame + :visited = ಠ_ಠ
requestAnimationFrame + :visited = ಠ_ಠ
Link Visited Link
Link Visited Link <16ms >60ms Time to render
JSON-P
MORE LIKE JSON-Pretty-Insecure
“I’d really like it if someone could run arbitrary dynamic
scripts on my page” - JSONP Users
You wouldn’t do this.
So don’t do this.
A Leak In The Response
YouProbablyShouldUseCORS.tumblr.com
enable-cors.org
Try to say CROSS SITE! REQUEST FORGERY 5 times fast.
Set-Cookie ‘csrf=0003’
Set-Cookie ‘csrf=0003’
None
None
None
It gets worse.
Contextis White Paper
Cross-Domain Data Snooping via SVG Filters and OCR
None
ಠ_ಠ
We need a new approach.
Content Security Policy
None
Disallow Inline JS, CSS By Default!
Disallow eval By Default!
Disallow Cross Domain JS, CSS, IMG, Fonts
Report Violations!
None
A White List That’s the key!
Good Security Goes Beyond Content Injection
<iframe sandbox>
HTTPS Everywhere
HTTPS Everywhere
HTTPS Only
301 Redirect http
https HSTS
Frame Busting
Disallow as an iFrame X-Frame-Options
It’s “security by default.” At least much closer…
You can rely a little less on being perfect.
it only matters if everyone buys in. But
We need our own slogan.
We need developers to take pride in making secure applications.
Don’t Mess With The Web
ಠ_ಠ
Let’s do something about it together.
Thanks! @SlexAxton Special Thanks To: Mike West * 1000 Adam
Baldwin Contextis MDN