Browser security·29 questions

How to configure Content Security Policy (CSP) to protect web applications against XSS attacks directly in the browser?

Answer

Content Security Policy is a powerful security tool that allows website owners and developers to explicitly specify to the browser which content sources are trusted for loading on a page. CSP configuration is implemented via a special HTTP header that the server sends along with the web page. This header instructs the browser which domains are allowed to run scripts and which requests should be blocked immediately.

The main task of this policy is to prevent cross-site scripting attacks by prohibiting the execution of malicious code injected by attackers. The browser strictly analyzes each page element for compliance with the specified security rules. If a script or image attempts to load from an external unauthorized resource, the browser aborts this action and logs the violation in the developer console.

To implement basic security, resource administrators are advised to follow a specific sequence of actions.

Analyze all external resources, scripts, styles, and fonts used by the web application for its proper operation.
Formulate the policy header defining the allowed domains for the script-src, style-src, and img-src directives.
Embed the created header into the web server configuration or use the meta tag in the HTML code of the page.
Activate the report-only testing mode to track potential errors without blocking the legitimate functionality of the site.
Switch the policy to active blocking mode after successfully completing all preliminary tests.
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