Cross-site scripting, commonly known as an XSS attack, allows an attacker to impersonate a target user and do activities that the user is capable of, allowing the attacker to steal any of the user’s data. An attacker who can impersonate a privileged victim user can acquire complete control of the application’s data and capabilities. In this attack, the attacker injects malicious client-side code into web services in order to steal data, run harmful code, take control of a user’s session, and perform a phishing scam.
The following are some strategies to avoid an XSS attack:
- Cross-check user’s input
- Sanitize HTML
- Employ anti-XSS tools
- Use encoding
- Check for regular updates of the software