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What Is Clickjacking? How a Website Can Be Tricked Into Receiving a Click

Clickjacking deceives people into clicking real controls on another site. Learn how framing policies, cookie settings and action-specific safeguards reduce the risk.
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Clickjacking is a user-interface redress attack: a deceptive page tricks someone into clicking a real control on another website while making it look as though the click is going somewhere else. The click is genuine; the person’s understanding of what is beneath the pointer is manipulated. If the person is signed in to the target site, the unintended action may be submitted using that active session.

How does clickjacking work?

In a common frame-based attack, a deceptive page presents a harmless-looking prompt or other decoy and places an embedded page from a target website beneath it. The attacker aligns a real control on the target page with the visible decoy. When the visitor clicks, the browser sends the input to the framed page’s control instead.

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If the visitor has an active session on the target site, the request may include the credentials associated with that session, allowing the action to succeed. That does not mean the target site has been hacked: the attacker has manipulated the interface through which the visitor interacts with it. This is why clickjacking is also called UI redress.

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For a simplified illustration, imagine a page showing a large “Continue” button. A different, real button on a framed site sits underneath the same spot. The visitor sees and intends to click “Continue,” but the framed site receives the click. The example describes the deception without using or targeting a real service.

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How can a website prevent clickjacking?

Set a framing policy in the response header

The main defense against frame-based clickjacking is the frame-ancestors directive in an HTTP Content-Security-Policy response header. OWASP’s Clickjacking Defense Cheat Sheet recommends choosing a policy that matches the application’s embedding needs:

  • Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'none'; prevents other origins from framing the page.
  • Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; allows framing by the same origin.
  • If the application must be embedded by another site, allow only the specific origins that need access.

Send this policy as an HTTP response header. OWASP notes that frame-ancestors does not work when placed in a <meta> element. Apply the policy consistently to relevant HTML responses, especially pages containing sensitive controls.

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Keep X-Frame-Options as a compatibility layer where needed

X-Frame-Options: DENY or X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN can provide a compatibility layer for older browser support. It offers less flexible framing choices than frame-ancestors. Do not use ALLOW-FROM as a modern cross-browser allow-list: OWASP describes it as obsolete and unsupported in modern browsers. MDN’s frame-ancestors documentation explains that browsers supporting the CSP directive use it in preference to X-Frame-Options when both are present.

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Limit when session cookies accompany embedded requests

Where authentication flows allow it, set session cookies to SameSite=Lax or SameSite=Strict. These settings can reduce the chance that cookies accompany cross-site iframe requests, making an embedded request less likely to be treated as an authenticated user action. They do not stop a page from being framed and are only a partial mitigation; not every clickjacking scenario depends on authentication.

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Protect sensitive actions as well as pages

Headers are not a complete answer to every variant. OWASP notes that DoubleClickjacking uses separate windows and needs additional safeguards. For consequential actions, application designers can use protections tied to the action itself, such as a clear confirmation or re-authentication where appropriate. These are design practices, not guarantees provided by framing headers.

How do you check whether a deployment is protected?

  1. Inspect the actual HTTP responses for pages that contain sensitive controls. Confirm that the Content-Security-Policy header includes the intended frame-ancestors policy.
  2. Check whether an X-Frame-Options compatibility header is present and configured as intended.
  3. Verify that reverse proxies and other intermediary layers do not remove or alter the framing protections.
  4. Test the application’s framing behavior using the guidance in OWASP’s Web Security Testing Guide, including the risk of a proxy stripping a framing header.
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How do the main defenses differ?

Defense What it helps with Important limitation
frame-ancestors in CSP Controls which origins may frame a page, including allowing none, the same origin, or specified origins. Targets frame-based attacks; separate-window variants need additional safeguards.
X-Frame-Options Provides a compatibility layer with options such as DENY and SAMEORIGIN. Less granular than CSP; ALLOW-FROM is obsolete in modern browsers.
SameSite=Lax or SameSite=Strict session cookies Can reduce credentials sent with cross-site iframe requests. Does not block framing and helps only in scenarios that depend on credentials.
Action-specific safeguards Can add protection around sensitive actions, for example through confirmation or re-authentication. Must be designed into the application; headers do not supply these safeguards.

OWASP’s Clickjacking Defense Cheat Sheet describes clickjacking as a UI redress attack and provides developer guidance for defending against it.

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