Security is one of the important aspects of managing web applications. Every few days there is a new security threat looming. It assures the users of the website that their data is secured. Laravel is a standout amongst the most well known and advanced PHP frameworks for web applications with its expressive syntax.
Laravel provides several security mechanisms to secure the website:
- Laravel Authentication System
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) Protection on Laravel
- Protection against XSS (Cross Site Scripting)
- SQL Injection
- Laravel Security Packages
1. Laravel Authentication System
Laravel has its own unique authentication process. It takes care of most of the user authentication process and the boilerplate code also comes ready to use with it.
The safety feature is further enhanced by “providers’ and ‘guards” facility to fully secure the authentication process.
2.Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) Protection on Laravel
Laravel makes it easy to protect your application from cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks. Cross-site request forgeries are a type of malicious exploit whereby unauthorized commands are performed on behalf of an authenticated user.
Laravel automatically generates a CSRF “token” for each active user session managed by the application. This token is used to verify that the authenticated user is the one actually making the requests to the application.
Anytime you define an HTML form in your application, you should include a hidden CSRF token field in the form so that the CSRF protection middleware can validate the request.
3. Protection against XSS (Cross Site Scripting)
Laravel offers protection from XSS attacks, its native support system protects the code against Cross Site Scripting. It starts taking action automatically and not only protects the data but also the program that contains escape tags as outputted in HTML.
4. SQL Injection
The Eloquent ORM in Laravel uses PDO binding to fight against SQL injections. It actually keeps a check on the misuse of SQL queries by malicious users by changing the intent’ of the queries.
5. Laravel Security Packages
Laravel offers several packages to enhance the security of its applications.Here some of the most popular security focused Laravel packages:
Laravel Security Component: Laravel security component mainly provides security for the roles/objects and integrates Symfony security core in Laravel. It uses voters to check role based privileges to different roles, so could validate its security.
Laravel Security: Laravel security is one of the most frequently used packages and is known for removing XSS vulnerabilities in the codebase.
Laravel-ACL: Laravel-ACL provides role based secured permissions to the Laravel authentication process. The package helps protecting routes and CRUD controller methods in the applications.
