Penetration Testing: A Survival Guide

Cross-site scripting

Cross-site scripting attack exposes the flaw that allows the attacker to store a malicious script on a target website or trick the victim to submit the script to the target website that is shown to the client. The script is usually written in JavaScript. An important point to note here is that although the script could be stored in the target website, it does not run on that website. The script runs on the user's browser and is capable of doing every action that the user could perform on the target website. Since the aim of this attack is to run a malicious script on the client, it is known as a client-side attack.

A vulnerable website would lend a helping hand to this malicious activity by failing to do proper input validation. ...