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
Sponsored
·
Ship Features Fearlessly
Turn features on and off without deploys. Used by thousands of Ruby developers.
→
Alex Sexton
February 12, 2014
Technology
2.5k
3
Share
Embed
Copy iframe code
Copy JS code
Copy link
Start on current slide
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
More Decks by Alex Sexton
See All by Alex Sexton
Your Very Own Component Library
slexaxton
5
750
Front-End Ops - jQuery Conf Chicago 2014
slexaxton
1
1k
Practicing Safe Script
slexaxton
18
3k
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
OAuth SPIFFE Client Authentication(OAuth/OIDC Numa (Immersion) Workshop 2026)
oidfj
PRO
0
110
Eight Engineering Unit 紹介資料
sansan33
PRO
3
8.3k
サービス内で複数のOP・ASを連鎖させる(OAuth/OIDC Numa (Immersion) Workshop 2026)
oidfj
PRO
0
110
わたしが知り合いゼロの勉強会に 行けるようになるまで
r5ni4
2
570
AI時代のアウトプット――変わったこと、変わらないこと / Devsumi 2026 Kansai #devsumi
jnchito
0
560
Netflix の裏側に何があるのか...その謎を解明すべく、我々は Amazon の奥地へと向かった
kentosuzuki
0
110
あなたの知らないバージョン命名規則
sat
PRO
2
580
ブラウザで変わるID連携(OAuth/OIDC Numa (Immersion) Workshop 2026)
oidfj
PRO
0
110
All About Sansan – for New Global Engineers
sansan33
PRO
1
1.5k
なぜ Temporal の大小比較には compare しかないのか / Why Does Temporal Only Have compare() for Comparisons
kazukihayase
1
200
dbt と Snowflake と tag
kevinrobot34
1
220
カーネルまで探検して理解するふたつの自動計装
sumiyae
0
290
Featured
See All Featured
Cheating the UX When There Is Nothing More to Optimize - PixelPioneers
stephaniewalter
287
14k
The untapped power of vector embeddings
frankvandijk
2
1.8k
Designing Dashboards & Data Visualisations in Web Apps
destraynor
232
55k
Design and Strategy: How to Deal with People Who Don’t "Get" Design
morganepeng
133
19k
The Invisible Side of Design
smashingmag
301
52k
The Organizational Zoo: Understanding Human Behavior Agility Through Metaphoric Constructive Conversations (based on the works of Arthur Shelley, Ph.D)
kimpetersen
PRO
0
420
Amusing Abliteration
ianozsvald
1
260
Technical Leadership for Architectural Decision Making
baasie
3
530
Distributed Sagas: A Protocol for Coordinating Microservices
caitiem20
333
23k
The State of eCommerce SEO: How to Win in Today's Products SERPs - #SEOweek
aleyda
2
11k
Tips & Tricks on How to Get Your First Job In Tech
honzajavorek
1
710
How to Grow Your eCommerce with AI & Automation
katarinadahlin
PRO
1
250
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