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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T16:43:40+00:00

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of computer security vulnerability typically found in web

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Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type
of computer security vulnerability
typically found in web applications
which enable malicious attackers to
inject client-side script into web
pages viewed by other users. An
exploited cross-site scripting
vulnerability can be used by attackers
to bypass access controls such as the
same origin policy. Cross-site
scripting carried out on websites were
roughly 80% of all security
vulnerabilities documented by Symantec
as of 2007.

Okay so does this mean that a hacker crafts some malicious JS/VBscript and delivers it to the unsuspecting victim when visiting a legitimate site which has unescaped inputs?

I mean, I know how SQL injection is done….

I particularly don’t understand how JS/VBscript can cause so much damage! I thoguht they are only run within browsers, but apparently the damage ranges from keylogging to cookie stealing and trojans.

Is my understanding of XSS correct? if not, can someone clarify?

How can I prevent XSS from happening on my websites? This seems important; 80% of security vulnerabilities means that it’s an extremely common method to compromise computers.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Straight forward XSS

    1. I find Google has an XSS vulnerability.
    2. I write a script that rewrites a public Google page to look exactly like the actual Google login.
    3. My fake page submits to a third party server, and then redirects back to the real page.
    4. I get google account passwords, users don’t realize what happened, Google doesn’t know what happened.

    XSS as a platform for CSRF (this supposedly actually happened)

    1. Amazon has a CSRF vulnerability where a “always keep me logged in” cookie allows you to flag an entry as offensive.
    2. I find an XSS vulnerability on a high traffic site.
    3. I write a JavaScript that hits up the URLs to mark all books written by gay/lesbian authors on Amazon as offensive.
    4. To Amazon, they are getting valid requests from real browsers with real auth cookies. All the books disappear off the site overnight.
    5. The internet freaks the hell out.

    XSS as a platform for Session Fixation attacks

    1. I find an e-commerce site that does not reset their session after a login (like any ASP.NET site), have the ability to pass session id in via query string or via cookie, and stores auth info in the session (pretty common).
    2. I find an XSS vulnerability on a page on that site.
    3. I write a script that sets the session ID to the one I control.
    4. Someone hits that page, and is bumped into my session.
    5. They log in.
    6. I now have the ability to do anything I want as them, including buying products with saved cards.

    Those three are the big ones. The problem with XSS, CSRF, and Session Fixation attacks are that they are very, very hard to track down and fix, and are really simple to allow, especially if a developer doesn’t know much about them.

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