Guide to Prevent Clickjacking in PHP [Updated Tips]
Published On : August 24, 2022 Category(s) : Tech Tips
Clickjacking is a process of tricking your users into clicking on something they are not aware they are clicking on. This may be accomplished by manipulating what the user thinks he or she clicked on, due to stealing their click and routing it somewhere else—most likely somewhere malicious where they could potentially download malware onto his or her device.
If you think your website has Clickjacking issues, then this could lead to a black listing for your domain (which would only worsen search engine optimization) and cause many headaches for both yourself and other users that visit the site again in the future. You can prevent these types of problems from happening by implementing one of five methods below before someone has to report the issue because there are so many aspects of this topic that need further exploration.
Related: Hire PHP Developers
What happens in the Clickjacking Attack?
Most hackers will try to conceal the malicious webpage under an iframe so that you think it’s really on a genuine link of the manifest web page but in reality, they’re not. It’s known as a UI redress attack. In this century, Clickjacking has become a major concern for cybersecurity around the world because many internet users make security mistakes which would lead to significant impacts on user safety. So, after looking at all these concerns – in this section we cover how to avoid clickjacking attacks using PHP.
- Defending with Content Security Policy.
A CSP frame-ancestors directive restricts web content from accessing particular domains. Additionally, Frame-ancestors allows you to authorize various hosts according to the conventional interpretation of CSP.
Below are benefits of a responsive website through FrameMaker – It establishes which browsers are able to execute pages within frames or not; it will keep you informed about Clickjacking risks while ensuring that your website isn’t captured and manipulated by cybercriminals who then change its original address or modify its contents; finally, your presence on social media channels is unchanged so any tweets posted via Tweeter show up on FaceBook post automatically.
The X-Frame-Options header is what a browser uses to allow or deny pages from loading inside an iframe. When setting up this header in your website, it will prevent Clickjacking attacks. There are three types of headers: DENY which tells browsers not to load pages inside frames; SAMEORIGIN which only allows pages from the same origin as the parent document; and ALLOW-FROM URI which lets specified URIs load inside frames regardless of whether they’re from the same origin.
- Practical Implementation.
You also need to attach the X-Frame-Options HTTP Response header to whichever webpage you want defended from Clickjacking before anything else can happen. Besides, there are other ways of doing it – such as applying a manual approach; or even using a filter which automatically adds the header when writing out PHP code. For example, if you’re running Apache on your server, all you have to do is edit this setting.
Header always set X-Frame-Options “SAMEORIGIN”
The SAMEORIGIN X-Frame-Options prevents framing from other sites. To configure Apache to enforce this setting, add these lines to your website’s configuration
Header set X-Frame-Options “DENY”
The DENY X-Frame-Options prevents framing the content by any domain.
Also See: Python VS PHP: Which Language can boost your business
3. Protection through Window.
Sometimes, scripts and actions cannot protect a website against clickjacking attempts and hacking. In these situations, window methods are often used to verify before going ahead with what they are doing on the site. For example, say there is an account signup form on a website that utilizes both frames and JavaScript for account registration.
There could be a clickjacking attempt created within one of the frames, since users aren’t aware it’s happening outside of the DOM browser or if they can’t view it at all because Javascript isn’t supported. A method such as window.confirm(); pops up over every field in order to ask for permissions first so no information gets leaked out without them realizing it.
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var action_confirm = window.confirm(“Are you sure you want to delete your youtube account?”)
if (action_confirm) { //… Perform action }
else { //… The user does not want to perform the requested action.` }
</script>
4. Best-for-now Legacy Browser Frame Breaking Script.
Another efficient way to prevent Clickjacking is by using the frame breaker script. This script prevents a webpage from being framed in legacy browsers – which are already slower than modern browsers because they aren’t updated very often – and so it makes sense that you would want to avoid framing those pages altogether.
Usually, it takes a few different actions (like tabbing) for someone who doesn’t know much about computer viruses, let alone metamorphs, to enter themselves into a frame of a website without even knowing what they’re doing–that’s where this frame breaker comes in! To implement these types of protections against Clickjacking prevention measures when your webpages don’t work well with the older versions of other software, follow these steps.
style id=”antiClickjack”>
body{display:none !important;}
</style>
Now, you can delete that STYLE element when you have implemented the script:
<script type=”text/javascript”>
if (self === top) {
var antiClickjack = document.getElementById(“antiClickjack”);
antiClickjack.parentNode.removeChild(antiClickjack);
} else {
top.location = self.location;
}
</script>
This way, one can include everything in the document HEAD and prevent his or her website from being Clickjacked.
5. Defending with SameSite Cookies.
SameSite cookies are mainly designed to prevent Cross-site Request Forgery (CSRF) but they also serve another important function: protecting against PHP-based Clickjacking attacks. If your session cookie is set to same site, then the authentication obtained by a victim will fail when used in a clickjacking attack on that website – which means that cookies linked specifically to this domain won’t be sent over to the attacker; all you need to do is make two possible changes in order for this attribute.
Set-Cookie: CookieName=CookieValue; SameSite=Lax; Set-Cookie: CookieName=CookieValue; SameSite=Strict;
In this passage, information about Clickjacking protection is discussed. For example, the JavaScript website offers detailed information about this procedure; additionally, there are tools such as firewalls that can be used for protection against Clickjacking.
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