Is it feasible to prevent XSS attacks by filtering out the "<" character from user input?

Is it feasible to prevent all XSS attacks on the front-end by filtering out < from user-generated content? This method appears straightforward in disabling harmful code, especially since I currently do not encounter any scenarios where < needs to be retained. Can this approach effectively thwart all XSS attacks?

My typical method of displaying user content involves rendering it as inner HTML, for example:

<div>{USER CONTENT}</div>

Answer №1

The impact of utilizing user input varies depending on the context.

If you incorporate it within an <a href=> tag, then the answer is: no!

<a href="{{linkFromUser}}">

This could lead to javascript:alert('oh no');

When a user clicks on the link, a browser will execute this script in the scope of your webpage.

Answer №2

Just to clarify, the solution can be found within a comment on the accepted answer.

Lux graciously shared a resource that validates using entity encoding < as sufficient to block scripts from executing in inner HTML content (which essentially addresses my query). It's important to also encode & and steer clear of the UTF7 XSS charset (apparently).

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