XSS Prevention Through Encoding: Escaping User Input in HTML
Output encoding is the primary defense against XSS. Learn which characters to escape, context-sensitive encoding rules, and how to avoid double-encoding bugs.
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Tags: security, xss, encoding
XSS Prevention Through Encoding: Escaping User Input in HTML Cross-site scripting (XSS) remains one of the most common web vulnerabilities — OWASP has listed it in the Top 10 for over a decade. The root cause is almost always the same: user-controlled data inserted into an HTML page without proper encoding for the context where it appears. This article explains the five OWASP output encoding contexts, the specific encoding rules for each, and when to reach for DOMPurify for rich HTML. What XSS Actually Is XSS occurs when an attacker causes malicious JavaScript to execute in a victim's browser, in the context of your website. The attacker doesn't need access to your server — they need your application to reflect or store their input and render it without encoding. Three main types:…
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