Security work is mostly the business of removing footguns before someone finds them. The interesting question is rarely whether an attack is possible — it is whether the ordinary path through your system makes it easy.
This piece walks through how we think about it at Paycux, what we have changed our minds about, and where the sharp edges are.
How does cross-site scripting work?
Consider how does cross-site scripting work?. Detection beats prevention when prevention is uncertain. If you cannot stop a class of abuse outright, make sure it produces a signal loud enough that someone sees it the same day.
Blast radius is the metric that actually matters. A credential that can read one organization's data is an incident; the same credential scoped to every organization is a company-ending event, and the difference is a design decision made months earlier.
Reflected XSS
Reflected XSS is where this gets concrete. Rotate on a schedule, not on an incident. A rotation path that has been exercised is a routine change; one that has never been used is an outage waiting for the worst possible moment.
Detection beats prevention when prevention is uncertain. If you cannot stop a class of abuse outright, make sure it produces a signal loud enough that someone sees it the same day.
- Scope credentials to the smallest useful blast radius
- Alert on the abuse you cannot prevent
- Exercise the rotation path before you need it
- Log the decision, not just the outcome
Stored XSS
Consider stored xss. Blast radius is the metric that actually matters. A credential that can read one organization's data is an incident; the same credential scoped to every organization is a company-ending event, and the difference is a design decision made months earlier.
Blast radius is the metric that actually matters. A credential that can read one organization's data is an incident; the same credential scoped to every organization is a company-ending event, and the difference is a design decision made months earlier.
DOM-based XSS
DOM-based XSS is where this gets concrete. Detection beats prevention when prevention is uncertain. If you cannot stop a class of abuse outright, make sure it produces a signal loud enough that someone sees it the same day.
Blast radius is the metric that actually matters. A credential that can read one organization's data is an incident; the same credential scoped to every organization is a company-ending event, and the difference is a design decision made months earlier.
Blast radius is the metric that actually matters.
Mutation-based XSS
Consider mutation-based xss. Blast radius is the metric that actually matters. A credential that can read one organization's data is an incident; the same credential scoped to every organization is a company-ending event, and the difference is a design decision made months earlier.
Rotate on a schedule, not on an incident. A rotation path that has been exercised is a routine change; one that has never been used is an outage waiting for the worst possible moment.
How to prevent cross-site scripting attacks
How to prevent cross-site scripting attacks deserves its own treatment. Detection beats prevention when prevention is uncertain. If you cannot stop a class of abuse outright, make sure it produces a signal loud enough that someone sees it the same day.
Blast radius is the metric that actually matters. A credential that can read one organization's data is an incident; the same credential scoped to every organization is a company-ending event, and the difference is a design decision made months earlier.
Further Reading:
Further Reading: is where this gets concrete. Detection beats prevention when prevention is uncertain. If you cannot stop a class of abuse outright, make sure it produces a signal loud enough that someone sees it the same day.
Rotate on a schedule, not on an incident. A rotation path that has been exercised is a routine change; one that has never been used is an outage waiting for the worst possible moment.
Where this leaves us
The pattern repeats across every system we have looked at: the hard part is not the mechanism, it is keeping the mechanism honest as the surrounding assumptions change.
If you are working through the same problem and want to compare notes, the docs cover the mechanics and the console shows the behaviour on your own data.
Everything here, already built
Sign-in, enterprise SSO, directory provisioning, roles and an audit trail behind one API.