Ensuring Security for a Basic Static Website: Key Considerations
Creating and deploying a static website can be a straightforward process, especially when it involves simple functionalities such as text manipulation and clipboard interaction. However, even basic public-facing sites should incorporate fundamental security measures to protect users and ensure a trustworthy experience. In this article, we will explore the key security considerations for a minimal static website built with HTML and JavaScript, such as one that converts ASCII art, and determine what measures are necessary to mitigate potential risks.
Understanding the Nature of Your Website
Your project is a minimalist static website hosted on GitLab Pages, primarily involving:
- HTML Elements: Buttons, labels, and textareas.
- JavaScript Functionality: Extracting text input, modifying it, displaying output, limiting input length, and enabling copying to the clipboard.
Since the site is static and doesn’t fetch or load dynamic content from external sources, the attack surface is inherently limited. Nonetheless, classic web security principles still apply.
Common Security Concerns for Static Websites
While static sites are generally more secure than dynamic, server-side applications, certain threats should still be addressed:
- Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): Malicious scripts injected into your site could execute in users’ browsers, especially if user inputs are displayed without validation.
- Content-Type Sniffing: Browsers might interpret files differently based on their content, potentially leading to security issues if scripts or data are not served correctly.
- Man-in-the-Middle Attacks (MitM): Interception or tampering during data transit, especially if the connection isn’t secured.
Given your site does not process user-generated content beyond simple input fields, the primary concern is to prevent malicious scripts from executing in the context of your site, which could exploit or compromise your users.
Is Content Security Policy (CSP) Necessary?
A Content Security Policy (CSP) is a powerful security header that defines permissible sources of content for your website. For example, it can restrict scripts, styles, or images to specific sources, effectively mitigating XSS risks.
For your simple static site, implementing a basic CSP is recommended, even if the site only uses inline scripts and resources. A minimal policy could look like:
http
Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; script-src 'self'; style-src 'self'
This restricts your site to load resources only from its own origin
