safe-target
v1.1.1
Published
Using `target="_blank"` can be insecure. This helps.
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Safe target="_blank"
links
Using target="_blank"
can be insecure. Especially if you use these from within a web app.
Wait, what?
Links that are opened using target="_blank"
can control the opener tab in some limited ways.
Yes, you read that right. Thank to the window.opener property, new windows have a reference to the window that opened them.
What's the big deal?
Imagine this scenario:
- I log in to my favorite web app.
- I click over to some section, and click a link to a 3rd party. The developers of the web app don't want me leaving their app, so they made it
target="_blank"
- Unbeknownst to me, the 3rd party was compromised, and a little bit of javascript was injected into their page. This javascript redirected my original window to a copy-cat page which says I need to log in again.
- I close the 3rd party tab, and am back on my original (now "logged out") tab. Everything looks legit, so I log in again.
I just gave some hackers my login information.
If you want to see this in action, check out docs/index.html.
Wow. So how do I fix this?
The solution, it turns out, is pretty simple.
Just add rel="noreferrer"
to your links that use target="_blank"
(HTML spec)
Simple enough, so why does this library exist?
We're humans, and adding rel="noreferrer"
is easy to forget, let alone spell (is that one "r" or two?)
So, just add this script to the bottom of your page, like so:
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<!-- stuff -->
<script src="//code.mattvenables.com/safe-target-blank/safe-target-blank.min.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
Installation:
You can install safe-target-blank in several ways:
Include the hosted JS directly on your page
<script src="//code.mattvenables.com/safe-target-blank/safe-target-blank.min.js"></script>
Install via npm (or yarn), and require it (for use with Webpack or Browserify)
npm install safe-target
yarn add safe-target
Install via Bower
bower install safe-target