Lack of Clickjacking Protection

Severity: Low to High

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Description

Clickjacking occurs when a page can be embedded in an iframe, with which the user can interact surreptitiously. This is most often performed by making the iframe transparent and placing it above decoy UI elements, causing the user to click inside the iframe without their knowledge.

To test for clickjacking, one can try embedding the target page in an iframe as follows:

<iframe src="http://example.com" width="500" height="500"></iframe>

Security Impact

Clickjacking can be used to trick users into performing many actions, from accepting requests to deleting data. In rare cases, clickjacking has even been used to compromise local files due to the embedding of a file explorer.

Note: Clickjacking-style embeds can be performed on many pages where there is no security impact. If it’s impossible to trick a user into performing a security-sensitive action, this isn’t generally considered to be a valid clickjacking issue. Security-sensitive actions include, but are not limited to: deleting one’s account, purchasing something, and downloading a malicious script.

Remediation

All application pages should set the X-Frame-Options header according to how it should be possible to embed the page inside an iframe. SAMEORIGIN will allow only pages from the same origin to embed it; DENY will prevent embedding entirely. This will prevent clickjacking attacks in all modern web browsers.

On top of that, you can also set up a Content Security Policy with a frame-ancestors directive pointing to white-listed hosts in order to prevent clickjacking. For example, a Content Security Policy containing frame-ancestors: none, prevents embedding the page altogether.

References


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