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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-15T16:59:43+00:00

I’m trying to find a solution for the following situation: I’ve a web application

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I’m trying to find a solution for the following situation:

  • I’ve a web application made of HTML, javascript, AJAX, ad so on.
  • I want users to contribute to my application/website creating plugin that will embedded in it.
  • This plugin will be created using similar technologies (ajax, HTML, etc) so i need to allow plugins to run their own javascript code.
  • Each plugin will work in a page that will contain some user information and the plugin (like old fbml facebook applications)

The problem is that in this way the plugin can also made calls to get users information. (because since plugin’s code is embedded it’s domain will be the same of the main website, and the code will be entirely on my website).

So the question is: how can I avoid it and have a precise control about what information a plugin can get about the user?

The plugin will not be checked and can be changed anytime, so reading all the plugin code is not a solution.

I’m open to any proposal, possibly easy and effective, and possibily not putting the whole plugin in a iframe.

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EDIT:
How did facebook do when there was the old way to create applications? (now it’s only iframe, but there was FBML application way, how did they get this secure?)

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Have you ever heard of exploits allowing arbitrary code execution. Which is one of the most dangerous attacks ?

    Well, in this case you are explicitly and willingly allow arbitrary code execution and there’s almost no way for you to sand box it.

    1) You can run the “plugin” within an iframe from a different subdomain to sandbox it in there, as you’ve mentioned. This way plugin can’t reach your cookies and scripts.

    Note that, if you want the plugins to communicate with your services from this domain, then it will be cross-domain communication. So you either need to resort to JSONP or use new cross domain access control specifications. (i.e. return appropriate headers with your web service response — Access-Control-Allow-Origin “plugins.domain.com”)

    2) Create your own simple scripting language and expose as much as you want. This is obviously tedious, even if you manage to do that, plugin developers will endure a learning curve.

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