creators_name: Yue, Chuan creators_name: Wang, Haining type: conference_item datestamp: 2009-04-06 19:11:33 lastmod: 2009-04-07 14:02:41 metadata_visibility: show title: Characterizing Insecure JavaScript Practices on the Web ispublished: pub full_text_status: public pres_type: paper abstract: JavaScript is an interpreted programming language most often used for enhancing webpage interactivity and functionality. It has powerful capabilities to interact with webpage documents and browser windows, however, it has also opened the door for many browser-based security attacks. Insecure engineering practices of using JavaScript may not directly lead to security breaches, but they can create new attack vectors and greatly increase the risks of browserbased attacks. In this paper, we present the first measurement study on insecure practices of using JavaScript on the Web. Our focus is on the insecure practices of JavaScript inclusion and dynamic generation, and we examine their severity and nature on 6,805 unique websites. Our measurement results reveal that insecure JavaScript practices are common at various websites: (1) at least 66.4% of the measured websites manifest the insecure practices of including JavaScript files from external domains into the top-level documents of their webpages; (2) over 44.4% of the measured websites use the dangerous eval() function to dynamically generate and execute JavaScript code on their webpages; and (3) in JavaScript dynamic generation, using the document.write() method and the innerHTML property is much more popular than using the relatively secure technique of creating script elements via DOM methods. Our analysis indicates that safe alternatives to these insecure practices exist in common cases and ought to be adopted by website developers and administrators for reducing potential security risks. date: 2009-04 pagerange: 961-961 event_title: 18th International World Wide Web Conference event_location: Madrid, Spain event_dates: April 20th-24th, 2009 event_type: conference refereed: TRUE citation: Yue, Chuan and Wang, Haining (2009) Characterizing Insecure JavaScript Practices on the Web. In: 18th International World Wide Web Conference, April 20th-24th, 2009, Madrid, Spain. document_url: http://www2009.eprints.org/97/1/p961.pdf