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LESSON 100 OF 173 · BACKEND: USERS AND SECURITY

Escape What You Echo

Practice

When a route answers with Results.Content(text, "text/html; charset=utf-8"), the browser reads the text as a web page: HTML. If that page repeats something a user typed, and they typed <script>alert(1)</script>, the browser runs that script on your site, as whoever is looking at the page. This attack is called XSS (cross-site scripting).

The fix is to escape what you echo. WebUtility.HtmlEncode, from System.Net, turns < into &lt; and > into &gt;. The browser shows those codes as the characters, and never runs them. For example, on a greeting route:

app.MapGet("/hello", (HttpRequest request) => {
    var name = request.Query["name"].ToString();
    return Results.Content("Hello, " + WebUtility.HtmlEncode(name) + "!", "text/html; charset=utf-8");
});

Here WebUtility.HtmlEncode("<b>Mia</b>") gives &lt;b&gt;Mia&lt;/b&gt;: the visitor sees the tags as text, not a bold name. JSON answers (Results.Json) don't need this, because a browser never runs a JSON answer as a page.

Your code must answer these requests. A user signed up with the email <script>alert(1)</script>@evil.com, and an admin added a product named <i>Desk</i>:

GET /welcome  (Authorization: Bearer <token>)
  →  200  Welcome back, &lt;script&gt;alert(1)&lt;/script&gt;@evil.com!
GET /search?q=ot
  →  200  Products matching ot: Notebook, Teapot
GET /search?q=sofa
  →  200  No products match sofa
GET /search?q=<script>alert(1)</script>
  →  200  No products match &lt;script&gt;alert(1)&lt;/script&gt;
GET /search?q=desk
  →  200  Products matching desk: &lt;i&gt;Desk&lt;/i&gt;

Your task: make /welcome answer HTML with the email encoded. Then build GET /search: read q from the query string, find the products whose name contains it, and answer the no-match text or the names found, as HTML, with q and the names encoded.


Assignment
Follow the Coding Tutorial to encode the email in /welcome and to build a safe /search page.


Hint
Read the words with request.Query["q"].ToString() and give the query "%" + q + "%" as its $pattern value. You can join WebUtility.HtmlEncode(…) to normal text with +: put every part that doesn't come from your own code inside it.


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