CSP is the abbreviation for Content Security Policy, a set of instructions to the browser on what kind of files is allowed to load. The angular csp is a critical security measure in protecting web pages against Cross-site Scripting or XSS attacks.
CSP in Angular and AngularJS can be applied at various scopes or layers:
- Global-like directives up on a start tag
- Tag directive on specific opening tags
Features of Angular
One of the most essential features of Angular applications is that they follow a pattern of dependency injection. This means that nearly every one of the services and components of an Angular application is injected into other objects via constructor injection, with dependencies usually expressed as type annotations on constructor parameters.
Uses of Angular CSP
- Scopes
Component scopes can be placed at global, root, or element levels. If a component is put into the global scope, it will be available to all child component templates. If it is placed in the root scope, then all child components will inherit it and its directives so that they can refer to this scope. Alternatively, if an element is placed into an element scope, child components can use tags like <my-component /> to refer to that scope in their templates.
- Resources
Restrict all resources from being loaded inside an Angular application by changing the default-src attribute in the Content Security Policy and appending ‘none.’ This means that no resources are allowed from third-party sources such as js, CSS files, and media files. These must be loaded from a domain or path controlled by the server instead of being available with just client approval. This is done by adding source lists on the policy’s directives or appropriate values.
- Security
If you want an Angular application to be secure against XSS attacks, you need to turn on the CSP feature of this framework and build your application with CSP disabled. In doing so, you can avoid many XSS problems and handle angular CSP violation errors better. However, you must also figure out a way to log out the violations and provide solutions to address this issue.
- Cookies
In Angular, cookies can be read using window.angular.cookies. This object holds all the cookies that are set by any of the Angular applications running in the browser at present, along with their properties. The properties available for each cookie include domain, expires, path, and secure, along with additional properties that can be added depending on the browser’s preferences, such as max-age, HTTP-only, and same-site.
- Js
Angular can also be configured so that all the JavaScript files are loaded from the current server itself. All the scripts are loaded using a web browser’s same-origin policy. In this case, you need to make sure that your web server serves the JavaScript files and not any others with those resources. This can be ensured by changing the CSP header with default-src ‘self’ or adding a source list on directives or values with an appropriate ‘self.’
