Episode 28 — Secure e-commerce pages and third-party scripts thoroughly
E-commerce security on the exam centers on who controls the payment page and what executes in the user’s browser, because skimming and injection attacks often exploit third-party content. This episode lays out the architectural choices the exam expects you to recognize: fully hosted payment pages or iFrames where the provider collects PAN, versus merchant-hosted pages that influence or handle capture. Each choice drives obligations for change control, content integrity, and monitoring. Critical controls include isolating payment fields, enforcing Content Security Policy to constrain script sources, deploying subresource integrity for fixed assets, and validating that third-party scripts cannot alter payment forms. We emphasize evidence: configuration files, build pipelines that pin versions, and monitoring that detects unexpected DOM changes or outbound requests.
We apply these principles to realistic scenarios. A marketing tag manager injects a new library that can read form fields; the correct response isolates payment input in a provider-controlled iFrame, restricts script execution, and requires pre-deployment review of all third-party code on checkout paths. A hosted-fields integration is sound but the merchant modifies surrounding page elements; exam-favored answers keep merchant influence away from sensitive inputs and verify that scripts cannot overlay capture fields. Troubleshooting addresses caches that serve stale, altered files; emergency hotfixes that bypass integrity checks; and reporting flows that accidentally capture PAN in analytics. Evidence of control includes provider attestations for hosted capture, web server headers showing CSP in enforcement mode, script inventories with hashes, and alert histories for tamper detection. Choose the options that reduce the browser attack surface, enforce integrity at load time, and prove through artifacts and monitoring that payment pages remain trustworthy over time. Produced by BareMetalCyber.com, where you’ll find more cyber audio courses, books, and information to strengthen your educational path. Also, if you want to stay up to date with the latest news, visit DailyCyber.News for a newsletter you can use, and a daily podcast you can commute with.
