Description
Content Security Policy (CSP) is a W3C guideline to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) and related attacks. XSS allows other people to run scripts on your site, making it no
longer your application running on your site, and opens your whole domain to attack due to “Same-Origin Policy” – XSS anywhere on your domain is XSS everywhere on your domain. (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WljJ5guzcLs)
CSP tells your browser to push least-privilege environment on your application, allowing the client to only use resources from trusted domains and block all resources from anywhere else.
Adding CSP to your site will protect your visitors from:
- Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks
- Adware and Spyware while on your site
This plugin will help you set your CSP settings and will add them to the page the visitor requested. Policy violations will be logged in a database table which can be viewed via an admin page that supplies all the violations, along with counts. Buttons easily allow you to add the sites to your headers or to ignore them.
This plugin also allows you to ignore sites that repeatedly violate your policies. For example, some tracking images will show as violating your policies, but you still don’t want them to run, therefore you can block the site from showing up in your logs – note, however, that the browser will still call your server and your server will still spend resources processing the call.
In addition, this plugin can help you to get on the HSTS Preload list – See https://hstspreload.org/ for details.
CSP Directives
CSP allows you to control where your visitors’ browser can run code from.
The W3C specification allows for the following directives:
-
default-src
The default-src is the default policy for loading content. If another setting is blank then this setting will be used. -
script-src
Defines valid sources of JavaScript. -
style-src
Defines valid sources of stylesheets. -
img-src
Defines valid sources of images. -
connect-src
Applies to XMLHttpRequest (AJAX), WebSocket or EventSource. -
manifest-src
Specifies which manifest can be applied to the resource -
worker-src
Specifies valid sources for Worker, SharedWorker, or ServiceWorker scripts. -
font-src
Defines valid sources of fonts. -
object-src
Defines valid sources of plugins. Stops your site becoming the source of drive-by attacks. -
media-src
Defines valid sources of audio and video. -
base-uri
Limit the values that can be used in the entry. -
frame-src
Defines valid sources for loading frames. -
sandbox
Enables a sandbox for the requested resource similar to the iframe sandbox attribute. -
form-action
The form-action restricts which URLs can be used as the action of HTML form elements. -
frame-ancestors
Whether to allow embedding the resource using a frame, iframe, object, embed, etc. in non-HTML resources. -
plugin-types
Restricts the set of plugins that can be invoked by limiting the types of resources that can be embedded. -
report-uri
URL to post information on violations of the policies you set. -
require-sri-for
Require integrity check for scripts and/or styles.
CSP Entry Syntax
Note – with version 3 of the CSP specification there has been a move to ‘strict-dynamic’ – see the Upgrade Notice section for more information.
Each directive can take one or more of the following values:
-
*
Allows loading resources from any source. -
‘none’
Blocks loading resources from all sources. The single quotes are required. -
‘self’
Refers to your own host. The single quotes are required. -
‘unsafe-inline’
Allows inline elements, such as functions in script tags, onclicks, etc. The single quotes are required. -
‘unsafe-eval’
Allows unsafe dynamic code evaluation such as JavaScript eval(). The single quotes are required. -
‘strict-dynamic’
The trust explicitly given to a script present in the markup, by accompanying it with a nonce or a hash, shall be propagated to all the scripts loaded by that root script. The single quotes are required. -
‘sha-AAAAAAAAA’
For scripts and styles that can’t take a nonce the browser will tell you a ‘sha-‘ value you can use. The single quotes are required. -
‘nonce-AAAAAAAAA’
The trust nonce value – this value is automatically generated per page refresh and should not be entered by the user. The single quotes are required. -
data:
Allow loading resources from data scheme – usually inline images. This is insecure; an attacker can also inject arbitrary data: URIs. Use this sparingly and definitely not for scripts. -
mediastream:
Allows mediastream: URIs to be used as a content source. -
filesystem:
Allow loading resource from file system. -
https:
Only allows loading resources from HTTPS: on any domain. This can be used to block insecure requests. -
www.example.com
Allow loading resources from this domain, using any scheme (http/https) -
*.example.com
Allow loading resourcs from any subdomain under example.com, using any scheme (http/https) -
https://www.example.com
Allows loading resources from this domain using this scheme. -
/path/to/file/
Allows loading any file from this path on this domain. -
/path/to/file/thefile
Allows loading this one file on this domain.
Security Headers
In addition to the CSP headers, there are other security headers supported, including:
-
Expect-CT
Instructs user agents (browsers) to expect valid Signed Certificate Timestamps (SCTs) to be served. -
Strict Transport Security
The HTTP Strict-Transport-Security response header (HSTS) lets a web site tell browsers that it should only be accessed using HTTPS, instead of using HTTP. -
X-Frame-Options
The X-Frame-Options HTTP response header can be used to indicate whether or not a browser should be allowed to render a page in a <frame>, <iframe> or <object> . Sites can use this to avoid clickjacking attacks, by ensuring that their content is not embedded into other sites. -
X-XSS-Protection
The HTTP X-XSS-Protection response header is a feature of Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari that stops pages from loading when they detect reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. Although these protections are largely unnecessary in modern browsers when sites implement a strong Content-Security-Policy that disables the use of inline JavaScript (‘unsafe-inline’), they can still provide protections for users of older web browsers that don’t yet support CSP. -
X-Content-Type-Options
The X-Content-Type-Options response HTTP header is a marker used by the server to indicate that the MIME types advertised in the Content-Type headers should not be changed and be followed. This allows to opt-out of MIME type sniffing, or, in other words, it is a way to say that the webmasters knew what they were doing. -
Referrer-Policy
The Referrer-Policy HTTP header governs which referrer information, sent in the Referer header, should be included with requests made.
Written By
This plugin was written by Dylan Downhill, CDO of Elixir Interactive .
Installation
Before You Start
I recommend you move all styles and scripts into include files – this will allow WP_CSP to approve the included file and will mean you can stop the browser running scripts that have been added to the page from an unknown source.
Read the ** Upgrade notice** for information on CSP version 3.
To Install
Follow the standard WordPress plugin installation procedures.
e.g.
- Upload
plugin-name.phpto the/wp-content/plugins/directory - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
- Visit the settings under ‘Settings->Content Security Policy Options’. I recommend you run this plugin in ‘report only’ mode for a little while to help you set your CSP settings correctly.
To Upgrade
See the new CSP V3 tab on the admin page.
FAQ
- Installation Instructions
-
Before You Start
I recommend you move all styles and scripts into include files – this will allow WP_CSP to approve the included file and will mean you can stop the browser running scripts that have been added to the page from an unknown source.
Read the ** Upgrade notice** for information on CSP version 3.To Install
Follow the standard WordPress plugin installation procedures.
e.g.
- Upload
plugin-name.phpto the/wp-content/plugins/directory - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
- Visit the settings under ‘Settings->Content Security Policy Options’. I recommend you run this plugin in ‘report only’ mode for a little while to help you set your CSP settings correctly.
To Upgrade
See the new CSP V3 tab on the admin page.
- Upload
- What is the best way to set a content security policy
-
When you first turn on CSP, put into report-only mode and build the basic rules for your site. After about a week, turn off report-only and go to enforce rules.
If you want to implement the latest W3C version of CSP – version 3 Google recommends – set the following for default-src, script-src, and style-src:
‘unsafe-inline’ ‘unsafe-eval’ ‘strict-dynamic’ https: http:
(single quotes are required) This will allow modern browsers to run the latest version of CSP with nonces, etc. and older browsers to just work without restrictions.If you’re going to run CSP v2, one good way of building a policy for a site would be to begin with a default-src of ‘self’, and to build up a policy from there that contains only those resource types which are actually in use for the page you’d like to protect. If you don’t use webfonts, for instance, there’s no reason to specify a source list for font-src; specifying only those resource types a page uses ensures that the possible attack surface for that page remains as small as possible.
- Should I set ‘self’ in all options
-
Usually you will trust your own site for all directives; however, I usually only add ‘self’ when it shows up as a violation. None of these directives is inherited, except some directives will default to ‘default-src’ if not set explicitly.
- Should I set ‘*’ in all options?
-
Usually you would want to keep security as strict as possible while still allowing your application to run. Therefore, ‘*’ should be avoided.
- Can I have a different policy for each page?
-
The W3C specification allows for a different policy for each page, this plugin was not written with page-level security capability.
- Can I have some options enforced and some report-only?
-
The W3C specification allows for this functionality; this plugin does not support this capability.
- No errors are getting logged
-
- First check that your site is producing CSP errors by starting the developer tools in your browser (usually F12) and checking for messages in the console output.
- If nothing is in the console output then check the page has a CSP header by looking at the page in the ‘network’ tab of the dev tools. Check the ‘response’ has a header called ‘content-security-policy’ or ‘content-security-policy-report-only’ – if this is misisng then the plugin is not running or CSP is not enabled.
- If there is a CSP header and nothing is reported in the console then you have no violations and everything is running as it should. Yippee!
- If there is a CSP header and errors in the console then the REST route might not be registered properly. Go to /wp-json and look for ‘wpcsp’ (usually CTRL-F for find and type in wpcsp) – if nothing is listed then the REST route is not getting registered.
- Look in the PHP error logs for an error – post the error, file name and line number in the support forums and I should be able to work out why it’s failing.
- CSP v3 Inline Scripts/Styles
-
Inline scripts and styles can be dangerous, you do not know which scripts wrote them and probably don’t want them run if you can avoid it. When you use ‘script-dynamic’, the “unsafe-eval” and “unsafe-inline stop working and the browser will say in the console “Note that ‘unsafe-inline’ is ignored if either a hash or nonce value is present in the source list.”
To fix this either:
* Put all the scripts and/or style code into files and include the files.
* If the browser returns “Either the ‘unsafe-inline’ keyword, a hash (‘sha256-h3SEZNZpOYg4jp6TCkoWN7Z477Qt3q1owH0SPbz+a4M=’), or a nonce (‘nonce-…’) is required to enable inline execution.” – you can take the SHA number (including single quotes) and put that in the policy line. - How Big Does The Database Get
-
This is different for all sites. The plugin will automatically delete records older than one week to keep the size managable. Also, if too many records are found the system will only report on the worse errors to avoid locking your browser.
- Handling the Violation Reports/Errors Is A Big Resouce Drain
-
Every error output by your browser is likely to result in a call to the server to log the error – if a page has 20 errors that’s 20 calls to your server – this can be a lot of processing power. To avoid this change the “Log Violations” option from “Yes, All” to “Yes – 10%”, “Yes – 1%’, or “Yes – 0.1%” – in each case the plugin will randomly allow only a set fraction of your visitors to report errors back to the server, they’re still enfored at the browser but no report will come back to your site.
Reviews
Contributors & Developers
“WP Content Security Plugin” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
“WP Content Security Plugin” has been translated into 2 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.
Translate “WP Content Security Plugin” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
2.3
- Bug: CSP Enforced mode was getting lost due to ’empty()’ check
2.2
- Moved CSP v3 information into tab on admin screen to make it easier to find
- Grouped options on admin panels – added red border to make grouping obvious
- Added HSTS preload option and warning text. Handle auto-redirect by WordPress.
- Added support for ‘unsafe-hashed-attributes’ which is a W3C work in progress setting
- Bug: Undefined variables in admin screens
- Bug: Display of errors for policies was breaking
- Bug: internal link tester failed due to private function
- Tested against WordPress 4.9.4
2.1
- Added full support for CSP version 3 – nonces, auto-tagging scripts and style tags, etc. See section CSP v3 Additional Nonce Tagging
- Added ‘base-uri’ and ‘require-sri-for’
- Changed to use get_rest_url()
2.0
- Added support for various other security related header options
- Added ability to change URL violations are reported to
- Added validation of URLs entered
- Added ability to turn off CSP headers while keeping other security related headers
- Fixed issue when run on PHP below 5.6 (tested on PHP 5.3)
1.9
- Add support for block-mixed-content and upgrade-insecure-requests
- Add support for worker-src and manifest-src
- Add support for mediastream: and filesystem:
- Add display of configuration errors at the top of the save page.
- Fix register_route issues
- Change size of configuration entry boxes to match their contents.
1.8
- Fixed issues running on WP 4.8
- Limit logged violations to top 100.
1.7
- Bug in Rest route registering
- Create table limits the size of the secondary key to avoid table creation issues
- Updated requires to 4.4 due to Rest integration
1.6
- Bug in Rest route
1.5
- Update ‘tested up to’ to WordPress 4.9
- Moved to REST calls
1.4
- Update ‘tested up to’ to WordPress 4.6
- Fixed wrong label on ‘frame ancestors’ admin field.
- Added ability to limit load on server by only logging errors for a percentage of page loads.
- Auto creates log table if it’s missing.
1.3
- Some class and admin functions were not static but needed to be.
- Fixed undefined variables.
1.2
- Added entry verification for admin screen and added information for user.
- Using the automatic add to policy/ignore is now cleaner and simpler.
- Added nonce in callback to prevent attacks.
1.1
- Bug fix.
1.0
- Initial release.