Content security policy overview

A Content Security Policy (CSP) can provide additional layers of defense for Adobe Commerce installations by helping to detect and mitigate Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and related data injection attacks. This common attack vector works by injecting malicious content that falsely claims to originate from the website. After the malicious content is loaded and executed, it can initiate the unauthorized transfer of data.

CSP provides a standardized set of directives that tells the browser which content resources can be trusted, and which should be blocked. Using carefully defined policies, CSP can restrict browser content to allow only whitelisted resources to appear.

Configuration

To avoid interfering with site operations, CSP can be implemented in phases. CSP has two basic modes of operation: report-only mode and restrict mode.

Report-only mode: The browser is instructed to report policy violations, but not enforce them. Every time a requested resource violates CSP, the browser logs the resulting errors to the console. The console log can then be used to investigate the cause of each violation.

It is important to review all CSP errors as they occur and refine the policies until all necessary resources are whitelisted. It is safe to switch to restrict mode when no more errors occur. Otherwise, a poorly configured CSP might cause the browser to display a blank page with numerous console errors. A properly configured CSP allows whitelisted content to be delivered without any perceived impact on performance.

Restrict mode: The browser is instructed to enforce all content policies and limit publication to whitelisted resources.

The first phase of the Adobe Commerce CSP implementation was introduced in Adobe Commerce 2.3.5 and made CSP available in report-only mode by default. In Adobe Commerce 2.4.7 and later, CSP is configured in restrict-mode by default for payment pages in the storefront and admin areas, and in report-only mode for all other pages. The corresponding CSP header does not contain the unsafe-inline keyword inside the script-src directive for payment pages. Also, only whitelisted inline scripts are allowed.

Because CSP is configured from the server, rather than from the Admin, most merchants need the assistance of a system integrator or developer to configure it properly. See Content Security Policies in the Commerce PHP Developer Guide.