CSP stands for Content Security Policy.

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CSP stands for Content Security Policy. Is a W3C specification offering the possibility to instruct the client browser from which location and/or which type of resources are allowed to be loaded. To define a loading behavior, the CSP specification use "directive" where a directive defines a loading behavior for a target resource type. This article is based on version 1.1 of the W3C specification. Directives can be specified using HTTP response...

Key Takeaways

  • This article explains Risk in simple medical language.
  • This article explains Countermeasure in simple medical language.
  • This article explains Tools in simple medical language.
  • This article explains Information Links in simple medical language.
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  • Severe symptoms, breathing difficulty, fainting, confusion, or rapidly worsening illness.
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  • Any symptom that feels urgent, unusual, or unsafe for the patient.
1

Emergency now

Use emergency care for severe, sudden, rapidly worsening, or life-threatening symptoms.

2

See a doctor

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3

Learn safely

Use this article to understand possible causes, tests, treatment options, prevention, and questions to ask your clinician.

CSP stands for Content Security Policy.

Is a W3C specification offering the possibility to instruct the client browser from which location and/or which type of resources are allowed to be loaded. To define a loading behavior, the CSP specification use “directive” where a directive defines a loading behavior for a target resource type.

This article is based on version 1.1 of the W3C specification.

Directives can be specified using HTTP response header (a server may send more than one CSP HTTP header field with a given resource representation and a server may send different CSP header field values with different representations of the same resource or with different resources) or HTML Meta tag, the HTTP headers below are defined by the specs:

  • Content-Security-Policy : Defined by W3C Specs as standard header, used by Chrome version 25 and later, Firefox version 23 and later, Opera version 19 and later.
  • X-Content-Security-Policy : Used by Firefox until version 23, and Internet Explorer version 10 (which partially implements Content Security Policy).
  • X-WebKit-CSP : Used by Chrome until version 25

The supported directives are:

  • default-src : Define loading policy for all resources type in case of a resource type dedicated directive is not defined (fallback),
  • script-src : Define which scripts the protected resource can execute,
  • object-src : Define from where the protected resource can load plugins,
  • style-src : Define which styles (CSS) the user applies to the protected resource,
  • img-src : Define from where the protected resource can load images,
  • media-src : Define from where the protected resource can load video and audio,
  • frame-src : Define from where the protected resource can embed frames,
  • font-src : Define from where the protected resource can load fonts,
  • connect-src : Define which URIs the protected resource can load using script interfaces,
  • form-action : Define which URIs can be used as the action of HTML form elements,
  • sandbox : Specifies an HTML sandbox policy that the user agent applies to the protected resource,
  • script-nonce : Define script execution by requiring the presence of the specified nonce on script elements,
  • plugin-types : Define the set of plugins that can be invoked by the protected resource by limiting the types of resources that can be embedded,
  • report-uri : Specifies a URI to which the user agent sends reports about policy violation

An introduction to CSP is available on HTML5Rocks. The browser support is shown on http://caniuse.com/#feat=contentsecuritypolicy

Risk

The risk with CSP can have 2 main sources:

  1. Policies misconfiguration,
  2. Too permissive policies.

Countermeasure

This article will focus on providing an sample implementation of a JEE Web Filter in order to apply a set of CSP policies on all HTTP response returned by server.

The policies will instruct the browser to have the loading behavior below using all HTTP headers defined in W3C Specs:

  • Explicit loading definition of each resource type,
  • Resources are loaded only from source domain,
  • Inline style is not allowed,
  • For JavaScript:
    • Inline script will be allowed because inline scripting is commonly used (can be disabled if target site does not use this type of scripting),
    • eval() function will be allowed in order to not break use of popular JavaScript libraries (ex: JQuery, JQueryUI, Sencha, …) because they use eval() function (it was the case last time I have checked the source code from CDN 😉 ),
  • Generation of a random not guessable script nonce to use into all script tags,
  • Plugin types only allow PDF and Flash,
  • No font loading (configurable),
  • No Audio / Video loading (configurable),
  • Enable browser XSS filtering feature.

The support for CSP directives is not the same level in major browsers (Firefox/Chrome/IE). It’s recommanded to check the support provided by target browsers (using site provided in link section of this article) in order to configure CSP policies. The sample below try to provide a set of policies from which your can add policies specific to your application context.

This implementation provide an option to add CSP directives used by Firefox (Mozilla CSP directives).

import java.io.IOException;
import java.security.MessageDigest;
import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;
import java.security.SecureRandom;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import javax.servlet.Filter;
import javax.servlet.FilterChain;
import javax.servlet.FilterConfig;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.ServletResponse;
import javax.servlet.annotation.WebFilter;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Hex;

/**
 * Sample filter implementation to define a set of Content Security Policies.<br/>
 * This implementation has a dependency on Commons Codec API.<br/>
 * This filter set CSP policies using all HTTP headers defined into W3C specification.<br/>
 * <br/>
 * This implementation is oriented to be easily understandable and easily adapted.<br/>
 */
@WebFilter("/*")
public class CSPPoliciesApplier implements Filter {

    /** Configuration member to specify if web app use web fonts */
    public static final boolean APP_USE_WEBFONTS = false;

    /** Configuration member to specify if web app use videos or audios */
    public static final boolean APP_USE_AUDIOS_OR_VIDEOS = false;

    /**
     * Configuration member to specify if filter must add CSP directive used by Mozilla (Firefox)
     */
    public static final boolean INCLUDE_MOZILLA_CSP_DIRECTIVES = true;

    /** Filter configuration */
    @SuppressWarnings("unused")
    private FilterConfig filterConfig = null;

    /** List CSP HTTP Headers */
    private List<String> cspHeaders = new ArrayList<String>();

    /** Collection of CSP polcies that will be applied */
    private String policies = null;

    /** Used for Script Nonce */
    private SecureRandom prng = null;

    /**
     * Used to prepare (one time for all) set of CSP policies that will be applied on each HTTP
     * response.
     *
     * @see javax.servlet.Filter#init(javax.servlet.FilterConfig)
     */
    @Override
    public void init(FilterConfig fConfig) throws ServletException {
// Get filter configuration
        this.filterConfig = fConfig;

// Init secure random
        try {
            this.prng = SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG");
        } catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e) {
            throw new ServletException(e);
        }

// Define list of CSP HTTP Headers
        this.cspHeaders.add("Content-Security-Policy");
        this.cspHeaders.add("X-Content-Security-Policy");
        this.cspHeaders.add("X-WebKit-CSP");

// Define CSP policies
// Loading policies for Frame and Sandboxing will be dynamically defined : We need to know if context use Frame
        List<String> cspPolicies = new ArrayList<String>();
        String originLocationRef = "'self'";
        // --Disable default source in order to avoid browser fallback loading using 'default-src'
        // locations
        cspPolicies.add("default-src 'none'");
        // --Define loading policies for Scripts
        cspPolicies.add("script-src " + originLocationRef + " 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval'");
        if (INCLUDE_MOZILLA_CSP_DIRECTIVES) {
            cspPolicies.add("options inline-script eval-script");
            cspPolicies.add("xhr-src 'self'");
        }
        // --Define loading policies for Plugins
        cspPolicies.add("object-src " + originLocationRef);
        // --Define loading policies for Styles (CSS)
        cspPolicies.add("style-src " + originLocationRef);
        // --Define loading policies for Images
        cspPolicies.add("img-src " + originLocationRef);
        // --Define loading policies for Form
        cspPolicies.add("form-action " + originLocationRef);
        // --Define loading policies for Audios/Videos
        if (APP_USE_AUDIOS_OR_VIDEOS) {
            cspPolicies.add("media-src " + originLocationRef);
        }
        // --Define loading policies for Fonts
        if (APP_USE_WEBFONTS) {
            cspPolicies.add("font-src " + originLocationRef);
        }
        // --Define loading policies for Connection
        cspPolicies.add("connect-src " + originLocationRef);
        // --Define loading policies for Plugins Types
        cspPolicies.add("plugin-types application/pdf application/x-shockwave-flash");
        // --Define browser XSS filtering feature running mode
        cspPolicies.add("reflected-xss block");

        // Target formating
        this.policies = cspPolicies.toString().replaceAll("(\\[|\\])", "").replaceAll(",", ";")
                .trim();
    }

    /**
     * Add CSP policies on each HTTP response.
     *
     * @see javax.servlet.Filter#doFilter(javax.servlet.ServletRequest,
     *      javax.servlet.ServletResponse, javax.servlet.FilterChain)
     */
    @Override
    public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain fchain)
            throws IOException, ServletException {
        HttpServletRequest httpRequest = ((HttpServletRequest) request);
        HttpServletResponse httpResponse = ((HttpServletResponse) response);

        /* Step 1 : Detect if target resource is a Frame */
        // Customize here according to your context...
        boolean isFrame = true;

        /* Step 2 : Add CSP policies to HTTP response */
        StringBuilder policiesBuffer = new StringBuilder(this.policies);

        // If resource is a frame add Frame/Sandbox CSP policy
        if (isFrame) {
            // Frame + Sandbox : Here sandbox allow nothing, customize sandbox options depending on
            // your app....
            policiesBuffer.append(";").append("frame-src 'self';sandbox");
            if (INCLUDE_MOZILLA_CSP_DIRECTIVES) {
                policiesBuffer.append(";").append("frame-ancestors 'self'");
            }
        }

        // Add Script Nonce CSP Policy
        // --Generate a random number
        String randomNum = new Integer(this.prng.nextInt()).toString();
        // --Get its digest
        MessageDigest sha;
        try {
            sha = MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA-1");
        } catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e) {
            throw new ServletException(e);
        }
        byte[] digest = sha.digest(randomNum.getBytes());
        // --Encode it into HEXA
        String scriptNonce = Hex.encodeHexString(digest);
        policiesBuffer.append(";").append("script-nonce ").append(scriptNonce);
        // --Made available script nonce in view app layer
        httpRequest.setAttribute("CSP_SCRIPT_NONCE", scriptNonce);

        // Add policies to all HTTP headers
        for (String header : this.cspHeaders) {
            httpResponse.setHeader(header, policiesBuffer.toString());
        }

        /* Step 3 : Let request continue chain filter */
        fchain.doFilter(request, response);
    }

    /**
     * {@inheritDoc}
     *
     * @see javax.servlet.Filter#destroy()
     */
    @Override
    public void destroy() {
        // Not used
    }
}

Tools

There’s a number of free tools that can assist with the generating, evaluation and monitoring of content security policy.

It’s very useful to include these types of tools into a web application development process in order to perform a regular automatic first level check (do not replace an manual audit and manual audit must be also conducted regularly).

Patient safety assistant

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Hi, I am RX Symptom Navigator. I can help you understand what to read next and what warning signs need care.
Warning: Do not use this in emergencies, pregnancy, severe illness, or as a substitute for a doctor. For children or teens, use with a parent/guardian and clinician.
A rural-friendly guide: warning signs, when to see a doctor, related articles, tests to discuss, and OTC safety education.
1 Symptom 2 Severity 3 Safe guidance
First safety question

Is there chest pain, breathing trouble, fainting, confusion, severe bleeding, stroke-like weakness, severe injury, or pregnancy danger sign?

Choose quickly

Browse by body area
Start here: Write or select a symptom. The guide will show warning signs, doctor guidance, diagnostic tests to discuss, OTC safety education, and related RX articles.

Important: This tool is educational only. It cannot diagnose, treat, or replace a doctor. OTC information is not a prescription. In an emergency, contact local emergency services or go to the nearest hospital.

Doctor visit helper

Prepare before seeing a doctor

A simple rural-patient checklist to help you explain symptoms clearly, ask better questions, and avoid unsafe self-treatment.

Safety note: This is not a prescription or diagnosis. For severe symptoms, pregnancy danger signs, children with serious illness, chest pain, breathing difficulty, stroke-like weakness, or major injury, seek urgent care.

Which doctor may help?

Start with a registered doctor or the nearest qualified health center.

What to tell the doctor

  • Write when the problem started and how it changed.
  • Bring old prescriptions, investigation reports, and current medicines.
  • Write allergies, pregnancy status, diabetes, kidney/liver disease, and major past illnesses.
  • Bring one family member if the patient is weak, elderly, confused, or a child.

Questions to ask

  • What is the most likely cause of my symptoms?
  • Which danger signs mean I should go to hospital quickly?
  • Which tests are necessary now, and which can wait?
  • How should I take medicines safely and what side effects should I watch for?
  • When should I come for follow-up?

Tests to discuss

  • Vital signs: temperature, pulse, blood pressure, oxygen saturation
  • Basic physical examination by a clinician
  • CBC, urine test, blood sugar, or imaging only when clinically needed

Avoid these mistakes

  • Do not use antibiotics, steroid tablets/injections, or strong painkillers without proper medical advice.
  • Do not hide pregnancy, kidney disease, ulcer, allergy, or blood thinner use.
  • Do not delay emergency care when danger signs are present.

Medicine safety and first-aid guide

This section is for patient education only. It does not replace a doctor, pharmacist, or emergency care.

Safe first steps

  • Rest, drink safe water, and observe symptoms carefully.
  • Keep a written note of symptoms, duration, temperature, medicines already taken, and allergy history.
  • Seek medical care quickly if symptoms are severe, worsening, or unusual for the patient.

OTC medicine safety

  • For mild pain or fever, ask a registered pharmacist or doctor before using common over-the-counter pain/fever medicines.
  • Do not combine multiple pain medicines without advice, especially if you have kidney disease, liver disease, stomach ulcer, asthma, pregnancy, or take blood thinners.
  • Do not give adult medicines to children unless a qualified clinician advises it.

Avoid these mistakes

  • Do not start antibiotics without a proper medical decision.
  • Do not use steroid tablets or injections casually for quick relief.
  • Do not delay emergency care because of home remedies.

Get urgent help if

  • Severe symptoms, confusion, fainting, breathing difficulty, chest pain, severe dehydration, or sudden weakness need urgent medical care.
Medicine names, dose, and timing must be decided by a qualified clinician or pharmacist after checking age, pregnancy, allergy, other diseases, and current medicines.

For rural patients and family caregivers

Patient health record and symptom diary

Write your symptoms, medicines already taken, test results, and questions before visiting a doctor. This note stays on your device unless you print or copy it.

Doctor to discuss: Doctor / qualified healthcare provider
Tests to discuss with doctor
  • Basic vital signs: temperature, pulse, blood pressure, oxygen level if needed
  • Relevant blood, urine, imaging, or specialist tests only after clinical assessment
Questions to ask
  • What is the most likely cause of my symptoms?
  • Which warning signs mean I should go to emergency care?
  • Which tests are really needed now?
  • Which medicines are safe for my age, pregnancy status, allergy, kidney/liver/stomach condition, and current medicines?

Emergency warning signs such as chest pain, severe breathing difficulty, sudden weakness, confusion, severe dehydration, major injury, or loss of bladder/bowel control need urgent medical care. Do not wait for online information.

Safe pathway to proper treatment

Patient care roadmap

Use this simple roadmap to understand the next safe steps. It is educational and does not replace examination by a doctor.

Go to emergency care if you notice:
  • Severe or rapidly worsening symptoms
  • Breathing difficulty, chest pain, fainting, confusion, severe weakness, major injury, or severe dehydration
Doctor / service to discuss: Qualified healthcare provider; specialist depends on symptoms and examination.
  1. Step 1

    Check danger signs first

    If danger signs are present, seek emergency care and do not wait for online information.

  2. Step 2

    Record the symptom story

    Write when symptoms started, severity, medicines already taken, allergies, pregnancy status, and test results.

  3. Step 3

    Visit a qualified clinician

    A doctor, nurse, or qualified healthcare provider can examine you and decide which tests or treatment are needed.

  4. Step 4

    Do only useful tests

    Do tests after clinical assessment. Avoid unnecessary tests, random antibiotics, or repeated medicines without diagnosis.

  5. Step 5

    Follow up and return early if worse

    If symptoms worsen, new warning signs appear, or treatment is not helping, return for review quickly.

Rural patient practical tips
  • Take a written symptom diary and all previous prescriptions/test reports.
  • Do not hide medicines already taken, even herbal or over-the-counter medicines.
  • Ask which warning signs mean urgent referral to hospital.

This roadmap is for education. A real diagnosis and treatment plan requires history, examination, and clinical judgment.

RX Patient Help

Ask a health question safely

Write your symptom story. A health professional or site editor can review it before any answer is prepared. This box is not for emergency care.

Emergency first: Severe chest pain, breathing trouble, unconsciousness, stroke signs, severe injury, heavy bleeding, or rapidly worsening symptoms need urgent local medical care now.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this article a replacement for a doctor?

No. It is educational content only. Patients should consult a qualified clinician for diagnosis and treatment.

When should I seek urgent care?

Seek urgent care for severe symptoms, rapidly worsening condition, breathing difficulty, severe pain, neurological changes, or any emergency warning sign.

References

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