CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpxss
aWebDeveloper
aWebDeveloper

Reputation: 38422

better way preventing xss attack

Which of the two is a better way to prevent an xss attack?

  1. HTMLEntities while saving in db
  2. HTMLEntities while displaying/echoing

I find the first one better because you may forget to add this while displaying.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 933

Answers (4)

phihag
phihag

Reputation: 288260

Reasons for encoding in the display code (i.e. after reading text from the database):

  • The database may be viewed in a non-HTML based GUI that would require modification. Modifying general-purpose database administration tools to automatically decode specific text(in which charset?) for a single application is neither feasible nor desirable.
  • Not properly encoding HTML means that you will have to trust the database to be safe. If there is ever a vulnerability – directly in the database or in another web application, your application will become vulnerable too.
  • Storing encoded HTML in the database prevents searching; you cannot directly use dedicated searching libraries like Lucene. Also, since html-encoding may not be bijective, full text searches must either operate on a decoded copy of the database or decode all entries in the database, incurring O(database size) performance.
  • Future encoding transitions are also way more easier if all the encoding code is concentrated in the display code.
  • Encoding increases the occupied storage space

I can't think of any reason for encoding when writing. You mention one may forget to encode data in the displaying logic, but I'd argue you're equally likely to forget it in the database storing code.

Upvotes: 1

Alfred
Alfred

Reputation: 61793

The best way(option number 3..) if you ask me is using the latest filter extension to handle filtering for you(PHP5). I like to put filter_input_array at the top of my php file to protect myself against for example POST XSS attacks

$_POST  = filter_input_array(INPUT_POST, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

You should read the filter documentation(tutorials) and protect yourself against XSS for input.

Upvotes: 1

Shef
Shef

Reputation: 45589

A better way would be strip_tags() and htmlentities() before saving to db (if you don't mind some extra bits of data).

However, make sure you have taken other precautions as well to protect against SQL injection, by using mysql_real_escape_string() or a prepared statement data-access abstraction layer, such as PDO.

Upvotes: -1

Quentin
Quentin

Reputation: 944320

which of the two is a better way to prevent xss attack.

  1. HTMLEntities while saving in db
  2. HTMLEntities while displaying/echoing

2 — you should convert to the target format at the last possible moment. This saves you from problems down the road should you, for example, decide you want to use the same content in an email, a PDF, as text back to the user for editing, etc, etc.

i find the first one better coz you may forget to add this while displaying

You might forget when inserting into the database too.

Also, not all data goes into the database. e.g. A preview of data about to be inserted or data put back into a form because of errors are both possible XSS vectors. You don't want to be dealing with things like "Encode before putting into the database, or when echoing back into the document if it didn't come from a database". Exceptions are the best way to get yourself into a situation where you forget to encode.

Upvotes: 6

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