Class AddDefaultCharsetFilter

java.lang.Object
org.apache.catalina.filters.FilterBase
org.apache.catalina.filters.AddDefaultCharsetFilter
All Implemented Interfaces:
Filter
public class AddDefaultCharsetFilter extends FilterBase
Filter that explicitly sets the default character set for media subtypes of the "text" type to ISO-8859-1, or another user defined character set. RFC2616 explicitly states that browsers must use ISO-8859-1 if no character set is defined for media with subtype "text". However, browsers may attempt to auto-detect the character set. This may be exploited by an attacker to perform an XSS attack. Internet Explorer has this behaviour by default. Other browsers have an option to enable it.
This filter prevents the attack by explicitly setting a character set. Unless the provided character set is explicitly overridden by the user - in which case they deserve everything they get - the browser will adhere to an explicitly set character set, thus preventing the XSS attack.

  • Constructor Details

    • AddDefaultCharsetFilter

      public AddDefaultCharsetFilter()

  • Method Details

    • setEncoding

      public void setEncoding(String encoding)

    • getLogger

      protected Log getLogger()
      Specified by:
      getLogger in class FilterBase

    • init

      public void init(FilterConfig filterConfig) throws ServletException
      Description copied from class: FilterBase
      Iterates over the configuration parameters and either logs a warning, or throws an exception for any parameter that does not have a matching setter in this filter.
      Specified by:
      init in interface Filter
      Overrides:
      init in class FilterBase
      Parameters:
      filterConfig - The configuration information associated with the filter instance being initialised
      Throws:
      ServletException - if FilterBase.isConfigProblemFatal() returns true and a configured parameter does not have a matching setter

    • doFilter

      public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException
      Description copied from interface: jakarta.servlet.Filter
      The doFilter method of the Filter is called by the container each time a request/response pair is passed through the chain due to a client request for a resource at the end of the chain. The FilterChain passed in to this method allows the Filter to pass on the request and response to the next entity in the chain.

      A typical implementation of this method would follow the following pattern:-
      1. Examine the request
      2. Optionally wrap the request object with a custom implementation to filter content or headers for input filtering
      3. Optionally wrap the response object with a custom implementation to filter content or headers for output filtering
      4. a) Either invoke the next entity in the chain using the FilterChain object (chain.doFilter()),
      4. b) or not pass on the request/response pair to the next entity in the filter chain to block the request processing
      5. Directly set headers on the response after invocation of the next entity in the filter chain.

      Parameters:
      request - The request to process
      response - The response associated with the request
      chain - Provides access to the next filter in the chain for this filter to pass the request and response to for further processing
      Throws:
      IOException - if an I/O error occurs during this filter's processing of the request
      ServletException - if the processing fails for any other reason