Laravel Security Features for Websites & Applications in 2023

Security is one of the most important features while developing web applications and it protects the data of users particular websites. Laravel includes various methods to keep websites safe and secure. It is a popular development platform for both performance and security. Laravel security features keep applications much more protected. It is an open-source platform with PHP framework which performs well and is also user friendly. 

No one can claim everything is perfect and 100 % secure so far if there is a security issue developers will solve the issues as soon as possible. Laravel security features will keep applications safe and secure according to users security demands. In this article, we will go through the list of security threats and how to overcome them

1. Laravel Authentication Security 

Laravel authentication Security is one of the effective processes as boilerplate coding is used. Most essential tools used by Laravel are guards and providers.

Guards give access to the user who makes request and providers assists in retrieving the users back from the database. Developers have to set up databases, controllers and models. while doing this process authentication will automatically get linked into the app 

2. Protection against  CSRF(Cross Site Reduced Forgery )

Laravel uses CSRF tokens to deny external third parties which generate faulty requests. Laravel creates a CSRF tokens and combines them with a request coming from a third party call

When the request is invoked, laravel compares the request with the token which is saved during the user’s session . If request does not match with the users token then it is considered an invalid request and no further action is taken 

3. Protection against XSS(Cross site scripting)

In XSS attacks, hackers enter your website using javascript code in the form of text and now when visitors enter the affected website and hackers get all data from the website it is basically handled with malicious intent like the comment section in a blog post. javascript code with malicious intent :

<script>alert("You are hacked")</script>

Even though the entire code is not malicious and if there is no XSS protection then javascript reloads the page every time when a user enters the affected page resulting in it being more prone to attack.

Ultimately Laravel Security features  already help in protecting code from XSS attacks. This feature automatically protects the database Any code with escape tags are considered as outputted HTML 

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4. Protection against SQL injection 

In order to protect the system from SQL, laravel uses PDO binding. Due to this, no other third person can change SQL queries intent as per their wish.

For example, the form needs to collect email address from the database and searches for particular email address SQL queries is modified to 

SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = '[email protected]’ or 1=1

 1=1 expression always results to be true and OR condition attached to the query resulting in fetching all the records from the database because the conditions evolve to be true 

Where the attack is taken to the next level when the command drop table users is added to the query and the user data is removed from the database when below code is executed 

SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = '[email protected]'; drop table users;

Laravel when using PDO binding where SQL query is not modified

SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = '[email protected] or 1=1'     

With this code 1=1 expression within quotes so records from the database will match the email or 1=1 expression as it will not return anything .

Eloquent ORM in laravel Using PDO binding remains the good option as it prevents modifying SQL query 

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5. Improving Security for laravel app

Few steps to consider for your web applications to be more safe and secure

Selecting  HTTPS instead of HTTP

Deploying a website on HTTP, where data including passwords are transferred in text, hackers could easily hack this during transmission. So to protect Code your web application should be converted to HTTPS format  with the help of  laravel developer  

Using laravel purifier 

HTML laravel purifier is used to yield html variables from database to customer as it will tie up the code and manage missing codes as well

Preventing XSS by escaping content 

({{ $variable }}): Double brace syntax must be used to avoid xss attacks 

{!! $variable !!} : Syntax to be used when data is safer to be viewed 

Avoid raw queries to prevent SQL injection

Laravel uses PDO binding to prevent SQL injection and the developer also depends on a raw SQL query. Laravel replaces question mark with query variable to escape input variable 

Laravel Security packages 

Laravel offers several security packages to improve the security of websites and applications.

Laravel security component: In this Laravel integrates with Symphony security core to protect roles and object 

Laravel security: It is mainly used for protecting XSS from vulnerabilities. It is done by integrating  Codeigniter 3 into Laravel 5

Laravel ACL: It protects applications from routes and CRUD controller methods assures application safe authentication process

Password Hashing

Password protection remains one of the important services Laravel using hash mechanisms like Bcrypt and Argon2 is used for saving sensitive data like passwords 

Cookies protection 

Laravel most important feature is also to protect cookies this can be done by enabling an encryption key. An encryption key needs to be created and inserted into a file so that cookies are protected 

You need to add the key into app.php file in config folders if laravel version 5 and above or else add the key into application.php.file in config directory if laravel version is 3 or below 

Conclusion

Laravel is a powerful PHP framework for mobile and website development. Laravel security features provide complete protection from third party attacks. These security features are easy to use as they are not complex as compared to older security features. To know about other features talk with our experts