Collected research

An Empirical Analysis of XSS Sanitization in Web Application Frameworks

Joel Weinberger, Prateek Saxena, Devdatta Akhawe, Matthew Finifter, Richard Shin and Dawn Song · University of California, Berkeley

Models browser parsers, context transitions and decoding operations to explain why sanitization can fail after data changes context. An evaluation of web frameworks and PHP/Django applications compares automatic escaping with actual output contexts and sanitizer policies. Examples show URI-scheme bypasses and DOM re-parsing that undoes HTML encoding.

Record

Researcher

Joel Weinberger, Prateek Saxena, Devdatta Akhawe, Matthew Finifter, Richard Shin and Dawn Song

Published by

University of California, Berkeley

Format

Whitepaper

Topic

XSS

In the archive

• Collected in the 2011 research round

Tags

• xss
• sanitizer-bypass
• dom
• encoding
• parser-differential
• measurement-study
• dynamic-analysis
• defence
• owasp-a03-2021
• owasp-a05-2021

This page is the archive's own catalogue record. The research is the work of Joel Weinberger, Prateek Saxena, Devdatta Akhawe, Matthew Finifter, Richard Shin and Dawn Song, first published at the original source. Preserved copies are kept so the citation survives its host; this one was last captured on 10 September 2026.