Preventing XSS Attacks
Despite the various manifestations of XSS, and the different possibilities for exploitation, preventing the vulnerability itself is in fact conceptually straightforward. What makes it problematic in practice is the difficulty of identifying every instance in which user-controllable data is handled in a potentially dangerous way. Any given page of an application may process and display dozens of items of user data. In addition to the core functionality, vulnerabilities may arise in error messages and other locations. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that XSS flaws are so hugely prevalent, even in the most security-critical applications.
Different types of defense are applicable to reflected and stored XSS on the one hand, and to DOM-based XSS on the other, because of their different root causes.
Preventing Reflected and Stored XSS
The root cause of both reflected and stored XSS is that user-controllable data is copied into application responses without adequate...