XSS prevention in JSP/Servlet web application

Question

How can I prevent XSS attacks in a JSP/Servlet web application?

Answer 1

If you want to make sure that your $ operator does not suffer from XSS hack you can implement ServletContextListener and do some checks there.

The complete solution at: http://pukkaone.github.io/2011/01/03/jsp-cross-site-scripting-elresolver.html

@WebListener
public class EscapeXmlELResolverListener implements ServletContextListener {
    private static final Logger LOG = LoggerFactory.getLogger(EscapeXmlELResolverListener.class);


    @Override
    public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent event) {
        LOG.info("EscapeXmlELResolverListener initialized ...");        
        JspFactory.getDefaultFactory()
                .getJspApplicationContext(event.getServletContext())
                .addELResolver(new EscapeXmlELResolver());

    }

    @Override
    public void contextDestroyed(ServletContextEvent event) {
        LOG.info("EscapeXmlELResolverListener destroyed");
    }


    /**
     * {@link ELResolver} which escapes XML in String values.
     */
    public class EscapeXmlELResolver extends ELResolver {

        private ThreadLocal excludeMe = new ThreadLocal() {
            @Override
            protected Boolean initialValue() {
                return Boolean.FALSE;
            }
        };

        @Override
        public Object getValue(ELContext context, Object base, Object property) {

            try {
                    if (excludeMe.get()) {
                        return null;
                    }

                    // This resolver is in the original resolver chain. To prevent
                    // infinite recursion, set a flag to prevent this resolver from
                    // invoking the original resolver chain again when its turn in the
                    // chain comes around.
                    excludeMe.set(Boolean.TRUE);
                    Object value = context.getELResolver().getValue(
                            context, base, property);

                    if (value instanceof String) {
                        value = StringEscapeUtils.escapeHtml4((String) value);
                    }
                    return value;
            } finally {
                excludeMe.remove();
            }
        }

        @Override
        public Class getCommonPropertyType(ELContext context, Object base) {
            return null;
        }

        @Override
        public Iterator getFeatureDescriptors(ELContext context, Object base){
            return null;
        }

        @Override
        public Class getType(ELContext context, Object base, Object property) {
            return null;
        }

        @Override
        public boolean isReadOnly(ELContext context, Object base, Object property) {
            return true;
        }

        @Override
        public void setValue(ELContext context, Object base, Object property, Object value){
            throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
        }

    }

}

Again: This only guards the $. Please also see other answers.