Alright! Today we’re going to talk about something that’s near and dear to every web developer’s heart: XSS prevention. But let’s not get bogged down in the technical jargon just yet instead, let’s take a more casual approach and break it all down for you like you’ve never seen before!

Before anything else: what is cross-site scripting (XSS)? Well, imagine this scenario. You’re browsing your favorite website, minding your own business, when suddenly BAM! some nefarious hacker injects a malicious code into the page you’re on. This code can do all sorts of nasty things like stealing your personal information or even taking control of your computer.

But don’t freak out, bro! There are ways to prevent XSS attacks from happening in the first place and that’s where safe sinks come in. A “safe sink” is a location on a webpage where data can be safely inserted without causing any harm. These locations include things like text fields or comments sections, which are designed specifically for user input.

Now, some examples of dangerous contexts places where XSS attacks are more likely to occur. For instance, if you have a script tag in your code that looks something like this: , then any data inserted into that location will be executed as JavaScript code. This is definitely not what we want!

Another dangerous context is inside an HTML comment for example,