"'Thorough and comprehensive coverage from one of the foremost experts in browser security.' --Tavis Ormandy, Google Inc. Modern web applications are built on a tangle of technologies that have been developed over time and then haphazardly pieced together. Every piece of the web application stack, from HTTP requests to browser-side scripts, comes with important yet subtle security consequences. To keep users safe, it is essential for developers to confidently navigate this landscape.In The Tangled Web, Michal Zalewski, one of the world's top browser security experts, offers a compelling narrative that explains exactly how browsers work and why they're fundamentally insecure. Rather than dispense simplistic advice on vulnerabilities, Zalewski examines the entire browser security model, revealing weak points and providing crucial information for shoring up web application security. You'll learn how to: Perform common but surprisingly complex tasks such as URL parsing and HTML sanitization Use modern security features like Strict …
"'Thorough and comprehensive coverage from one of the foremost experts in browser security.' --Tavis Ormandy, Google Inc. Modern web applications are built on a tangle of technologies that have been developed over time and then haphazardly pieced together. Every piece of the web application stack, from HTTP requests to browser-side scripts, comes with important yet subtle security consequences. To keep users safe, it is essential for developers to confidently navigate this landscape.In The Tangled Web, Michal Zalewski, one of the world's top browser security experts, offers a compelling narrative that explains exactly how browsers work and why they're fundamentally insecure. Rather than dispense simplistic advice on vulnerabilities, Zalewski examines the entire browser security model, revealing weak points and providing crucial information for shoring up web application security. You'll learn how to: Perform common but surprisingly complex tasks such as URL parsing and HTML sanitization Use modern security features like Strict Transport Security, CSP, and CORS Leverage many variants of the same-origin policy to safely compartmentalize complex web applications and protect user credentials in case of XSS bugs Build mashups and embed gadgets without getting stung by the tricky frame navigation policy Embed or host user-supplied content without running into the trap of content sniffing For quick reference, "Security Engineering Cheat Sheets' at the end of each chapter offer ready solutions to problems you're most likely to encounter. With coverage extending as far as planned HTML5 features, The Tangled Web will help you create secure web applications to stand the test of time"--
some of the basics is still relevant today but the vast majority has been adjusted / edited; well, the book has been published in 2012 (I have got my hands on the Polish version from 2012). I stopped reading it somewhere in the middle, hm, I have a feeling lots of things are extremely dated and fairly s0 (for example, there is info on Internet Explorer and Flash - dead as of Jan 2021) But still, if you come across it - it is a fine read
Awesome book, joy to read. It's dense, but written in a cheerful tone. The author knows a lot about web security. It's not bound to a narrow set of technologies, frameworks, OSes or browsers. It touches a little bit of everything. But it doesn't make it shallow. I wasn't aware about 90% of information presented in this book. It has no cumbersome and useless terms security charlatans like. It's very practical and full of advice.
I felt slightly uncomfortable because it was written around 2011. Some facts are clearly outdated (Flash is dead in 2019), some "things to come" became a bedrock of the modern web (CORS). At the same time I was glad it mentions those outdated facts. It provides historical perspective so you can see why the web works like this. For example, it has an explanation why "Download/Open" buttons have such a weird and annoying delay.
