Threats and the common types of attack part2

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Threats and the common types of attack Part2

Building a Secure Data Access Component

The following code shows a sample implementation of a CheckProductStockLevel method used to query a products database for stock quantity. The code illustrates a number of the important security features for data access code introduced earlier in this chapter.

Note If you are running .NET 2.0, you can use the Protected Configuration feature in .NET 2.0 to encrypt the connection string in the configuration file. You do not need any code for decrypting the connection string because the .NET runtime does this for you.
using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using System.Collections.Specialized;
using Microsoft.Win32;
using DataProtection;

public static int CheckProductStockLevel(string productCode)
{
int quantity = 0;
// (1) Code protected by try/catch block
try
{
// (2) Input validated with regular expression
// Error messages should be retrieved from the resource assembly to help
// localization. The Localization code is omitted for the sake of brevity.
if (Regex.IsMatch(productCode, "^[A-Za-z0-9]{12}$") == false)
throw new ArgumentException("Invalid product code" );
//(3) The using statement ensures that the connection is closed
using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(GetConnectionString()))
{
// (4) Use of parameterized stored procedures is a countermeasure for
// SQL injection attacks
SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("spCheckProduct", conn);
cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;

// Parameters are type checked
SqlParameter parm =
cmd.Parameters.Add("@ProductCode",
SqlDbType.VarChar,12);
parm.Value = productCode;
// Define the output parameter
SqlParameter retparm = cmd.Parameters.Add("@quantity", SqlDbType.Int);
retparm.Direction = ParameterDirection.Output;
conn.Open();
cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
quantity = (int)retparm.Value;
}
}
catch (SqlException sqlex)
{
// (5) Full exception details are logged. Generic (safe) error message
// is thrown back to the caller based on the SQL error code
// Log and error identification code has been omitted for clarity
throw new Exception("Error Processing Request");
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// Log full exception details
throw new Exception("Error Processing Request");
}
return quantity;
}

// (6) Encrypted database connection string is held in the registry
private static string GetConnectionString()
{
// Retrieve the cipher text from the registry; the process account must be
// granted Read access by the key's ACL
string encryptedString = (string)Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(
@"Software\OrderProcessing\")
.GetValue("ConnectionString");
// Use the managed DPAPI helper library to decrypt the string
DataProtector dp = new DataProtector(DataProtector.Store.USE_MACHINE_STORE);
byte[] dataToDecrypt = Convert.FromBase64String(encryptedString);
return Encoding.ASCII.GetString(dp.Decrypt(dataToDecrypt,null));
}

The code shown above exhibits the following security characteristics (identified by the numbers in the comment lines).

The data access code is placed inside a try/catch block. This is essential to prevent the return of system level information to the caller in the event of an exception. The calling ASP.NET Web application or Web service might handle the exception and return a suitably generic error message to the client, but the data access code does not rely on this.
Input is validated using a regular expression. The supplied product ID is checked to verify that it contains characters in the range A–Z and 0–9 only, and does not exceed 12 characters. This is the first in a set of countermeasures designed to prevent SQL injection attacks.
The SqlConnection object is created inside a C# using statement. This ensures that the connection is closed inside the method regardless of whether an exception occurs. This mitigates the threat of denial of service attacks, which attempt to use all available connections to the database. You can achieve similar functionality by using a finally block.
Parameterized stored procedures are used for data access. This is another countermeasure to prevent SQL injection.
Detailed error information is not returned to the client. Exception details are logged to assist with problem diagnosis.
The Encrypted database connection string is stored in the registry. One of the most secure ways of storing database connection strings is to use DPAPI to encrypt the string and store the encrypted cipher text in a secured registry key that has a restricted ACL. (For example, use Administrators: Full Control and ASP.NET or Enterprise Services process account: Read, depending on which process hosts the component.)
Other options are discussed in the "Database Connection Strings" section of this chapter.

Note The code shows how to retrieve the connection string from the registry and then decrypt it using the managed DPAPI helper library. This library is provided in "How To: Create a DPAPI Library" in the "How To" section of "Microsoft patterns & practices Volume I, Building Secure ASP.NET Applications: Authentication,Code Access Security Considerations

All data access is subject to code access security permission demands. Your chosen ADO.NET managed data provider determines the precise requirements. The following table shows the permissions that must be granted to your data access assemblies for each ADO.NET data provider.

Table 14.1 Code Access Security Permissions Required by ADO.NET Data Providers

ADO.NET Data Provider	Required Code Access Security Permission
SQL Server	SqlClientPermission Supports partial trust callers including Medium trust Web applications.
OLE DB	OleDbPermission*
Oracle	OraclePermission*
ODBC	OdbcPermission*

*The OLE DB, Oracle, and ODBC providers support only Full trust callers on versions 1.0 and 1.1 of the .NET Framework. To use these providers from partial trust Web applications, you must sandbox your data access code, which necessitates a dedicated data access assembly. For an example that shows how to sandbox data access code and use the OLE DB data provider from a Medium trust Web applicationNote In .NET 2.0, the Oracle, OLE DB, and the ODBC .NET data providers no longer demand full trust. This allows you to access SQL Server and other databases from partial-trust applications. To use these providers from a partial-trust Web application, you need to customize the policy and grant the appropriate permission; for example, OleDbPermission, OraclePermission, or OdbcPermission. For more information on customizing trust-level policy,

If you use the ADO.NET SQL Server data provider, your code must be granted the SqlClientPermission by code access security policy. High and Medium trust Web applications have this permission.

Whether or not code is granted the SqlClientPermission determines whether or not the code can connect to SQL Servers. You can also use the permission to place restrictions on the use of database connection strings. For example, you can force an application to use integrated security or you can ensure that if SQL Server security is used then blank passwords are not accepted. Violations of the rules you specify through the SqlClientPermission result in runtime security exceptions.

For more information about how to use SqlClientPermission to constrain data access,Deployment Considerations

A securely designed and developed data access component can still be vulnerable to attack if it is not deployed in a secure manner. A common deployment practice is for the data access code and database to reside on separate servers. The servers are often separated by an internal firewall, which introduces additional deployment considerations. Developers and administrators, be aware of the following issues:

Firewall restrictions
Connection string management
Login account configuration
Logon auditing
Data privacy and integrity on the network

Firewall Restrictions

If you connect to SQL Server through a firewall, configure the firewall, client, and server. You configure the client by using the SQL Server Client Network Utility and you configure the database server by using the Server Network Utility. By default, SQL Server listens on TCP port 1433, although you can change this. You must open the chosen port at the firewall.

Depending on the SQL Server authentication mode you choose and your application's use of distributed transactions, you may need to open several additional ports at the firewall:

If your application uses Windows authentication to connect to SQL Server, the necessary ports to support Kerberos or NTLM authentication must be open.
For networks that do not use Active Directory, TCP port 139 is usually required for Windows authentication. For more information about port requirements,[ http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bestprac/bpent/sec2/seconaa.mspx ] .
If your application uses distributed transactions, for example automated COM+ transactions, you might also need to configure your firewall to allow DTC traffic to flow between separate DTC instances, and between the DTC and resource managers such as SQL Server.

Connection String Management

Many applications store connection strings in code primarily for performance reasons. However, the performance benefit is negligible, and use of file system caching helps to ensure that storing connection strings in external files gives comparable performance. Using external files to store connection strings is superior for system administration.

For increased security, the recommended approach is to use DPAPI to encrypt the connection string. This is particularly important if your connection string contains user names and passwords. Then, decide where to store the encrypted string. The registry is a secure location particularly if you use HKEY_CURRENT_USER, because access is limited to processes that run under the associated user account. An alternative for easier deployment is to store the encrypted string in the Web.config file. Both approaches were discussed in the "Configuration Management" section earlier in this chapter.

Login Account Configuration

It is essential that your application uses a least privileged account to connect to the database. This is one of the primary threat mitigation techniques for SQL injection attacks.

As a developer you must communicate to the database administrator the precise stored procedures and (possibly) tables that the application's login needs to access. Ideally, you should only allow the application's login to have execute permissions on a restricted set of stored procedures that are deployed along with the application.

Use strong passwords for the SQL or Windows account or accounts used by the application to connect to the database.

Logon Auditing

You should configure SQL Server to log failed login attempts and possibly successful login attempts. Auditing failed login attempts is helpful to detect an attacker who is attempting to discover account passwords.

Data Privacy and Integrity on the Network

If you use SQL authentication to connect to SQL Server, ensure that login credentials are not exposed over the network. Either install a certificate on the database server (which causes SQL Server to encrypt the credentials) or use an IPSec encrypted channel to the database.

The use of IPSec or SSL to the database is recommended to protect sensitive application level data passed to and from the database. Summary

This chapter showed the top threats to data access code and highlighted the common vulnerabilities. SQL injection is one of the main threats to be aware of. Unless you use the correct countermeasures discussed in this chapter, an attacker could exploit your data access code to run arbitrary commands in the database. Conventional security measures such as firewalls and SSL provide no defense to SQL injection attacks. You should thoroughly validate your input and use parameterized stored procedures as a minimum defense.

Minimize HTTP Requests

80% of the end-user response time is spent on the front-end. Most of this time is tied up in downloading all the components in the page: images, stylesheets, scripts, Flash, etc. Reducing the number of components in turn reduces the number of HTTP requests required to render the page. This is the key to faster pages.

One way to reduce the number of components in the page is to simplify the page's design. But is there a way to build pages with richer content while also achieving fast response times? Here are some techniques for reducing the number of HTTP requests, while still supporting rich page designs.

Combined files are a way to reduce the number of HTTP requests by combining all scripts into a single script, and similarly combining all CSS into a single stylesheet. Combining files is more challenging when the scripts and stylesheets vary from page to page, but making this part of your release process improves response times.

CSS Sprites are the preferred method for reducing the number of image requests. Combine your background images into a single image and use the CSS background-image and background-position properties to display the desired image segment.

Image maps combine multiple images into a single image. The overall size is about the same, but reducing the number of HTTP requests speeds up the page. Image maps only work if the images are contiguous in the page, such as a navigation bar. Defining the coordinates of image maps can be tedious and error prone. Using image maps for navigation is not accessible too, so it's not recommended.

Inline images use the data: URL scheme to embed the image data in the actual page. This can increase the size of your HTML document. Combining inline images into your (cached) stylesheets is a way to reduce HTTP requests and avoid increasing the size of your pages. Inline images are not yet supported across all major browsers.

Reducing the number of HTTP requests in your page is the place to start. This is the most important guideline for improving performance for first time visitors. Making your page fast for these first time visitors is key to a better user experience.

Use a Content Delivery Network

The user's proximity to your web server has an impact on response times. Deploying your content across multiple, geographically dispersed servers will make your pages load faster from the user's perspective. But where should you start?

As a first step to implementing geographically dispersed content, don't attempt to redesign your web application to work in a distributed architecture. Depending on the application, changing the architecture could include daunting tasks such as synchronizing session state and replicating database transactions across server locations. Attempts to reduce the distance between users and your content could be delayed by, or never pass, this application architecture step.

Remember that 80-90% of the end-user response time is spent downloading all the components in the page: images, stylesheets, scripts, Flash, etc. This is the Performance Golden Rule. Rather than starting with the difficult task of redesigning your application architecture, it's better to first disperse your static content. This not only achieves a bigger reduction in response times, but it's easier thanks to content delivery networks.

A content delivery network (CDN) is a collection of web servers distributed across multiple locations to deliver content more efficiently to users. The server selected for delivering content to a specific user is typically based on a measure of network proximity. For example, the server with the fewest network hops or the server with the quickest response time is chosen.

Add an Expires or a Cache-Control Header

tag: server

There are two things in this rule:

For static components: implement "Never expire" policy by setting far future Expires header
For dynamic components: use an appropriate Cache-Control header to help the browser with conditional requests

Web page designs are getting richer and richer, which means more scripts, stylesheets, images, and Flash in the page. A first-time visitor to your page may have to make several HTTP requests, but by using the Expires header you make those components cacheable. This avoids unnecessary HTTP requests on subsequent page views. Expires headers are most often used with images, but they should be used on all components including scripts, stylesheets, and Flash components.

Browsers (and proxies) use a cache to reduce the number and size of HTTP requests, making web pages load faster. A web server uses the Expires header in the HTTP response to tell the client how long a component can be cached. This is a far future Expires header, telling the browser that this response won't be stale until April 15, 2010.

      Expires: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:00:00 GMT

If your server is Apache, use the ExpiresDefault directive to set an expiration date relative to the current date. This example of the ExpiresDefault directive sets the Expires date 10 years out from the time of the request.

      ExpiresDefault "access plus 10 years"

Keep in mind, if you use a far future Expires header you have to change the component's filename whenever the component changes. At Yahoo! we often make this step part of the build process: a version number is embedded in the component's filename, for example, yahoo_2.0.6.js.

Using a far future Expires header affects page views only after a user has already visited your site. It has no effect on the number of HTTP requests when a user visits your site for the first time and the browser's cache is empty. Therefore the impact of this performance improvement depends on how often users hit your pages with a primed cache. (A "primed cache" already contains all of the components in the page.) We measured this at Yahoo! and found the number of page views with a primed cache is 75-85%. By using a far future Expires header, you increase the number of components that are cached by the browser and re-used on subsequent page views without sending a single byte over the user's Internet connection.

Gzip Components

tag: server

The time it takes to transfer an HTTP request and response across the network can be significantly reduced by decisions made by front-end engineers. It's true that the end-user's bandwidth speed, Internet service provider, proximity to peering exchange points, etc. are beyond the control of the development team. But there are other variables that affect response times. Compression reduces response times by reducing the size of the HTTP response.

Starting with HTTP/1.1, web clients indicate support for compression with the Accept-Encoding header in the HTTP request.

      Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate

If the web server sees this header in the request, it may compress the response using one of the methods listed by the client. The web server notifies the web client of this via the Content-Encoding header in the response.

      Content-Encoding: gzip

Gzip is the most popular and effective compression method at this time. It was developed by the GNU project and standardized by RFC 1952. The only other compression format you're likely to see is deflate, but it's less effective and less popular.

Gzipping generally reduces the response size by about 70%. Approximately 90% of today's Internet traffic travels through browsers that claim to support gzip. If you use Apache, the module configuring gzip depends on your version: Apache 1.3 uses mod_gzip while Apache 2.x uses mod_deflate.

There are known issues with browsers and proxies that may cause a mismatch in what the browser expects and what it receives with regard to compressed content. Fortunately, these edge cases are dwindling as the use of older browsers drops off. The Apache modules help out by adding appropriate Vary response headers automatically.

Servers choose what to gzip based on file type, but are typically too limited in what they decide to compress. Most web sites gzip their HTML documents. It's also worthwhile to gzip your scripts and stylesheets, but many web sites miss this opportunity. In fact, it's worthwhile to compress any text response including XML and JSON. Image and PDF files should not be gzipped because they are already compressed. Trying to gzip them not only wastes CPU but can potentially increase file sizes.

Gzipping as many file types as possible is an easy way to reduce page weight and accelerate the user experience.

Put Stylesheets at the Top

While researching performance at Yahoo!, we discovered that moving stylesheets to the document HEAD makes pages appear to be loading faster. This is because putting stylesheets in the HEAD allows the page to render progressively.

Front-end engineers that care about performance want a page to load progressively; that is, we want the browser to display whatever content it has as soon as possible. This is especially important for pages with a lot of content and for users on slower Internet connections. The importance of giving users visual feedback, such as progress indicators, has been well researched and documented. In our case the HTML page is the progress indicator! When the browser loads the page progressively the header, the navigation bar, the logo at the top, etc. all serve as visual feedback for the user who is waiting for the page. This improves the overall user experience.

The problem with putting stylesheets near the bottom of the document is that it prohibits progressive rendering in many browsers, including Internet Explorer. These browsers block rendering to avoid having to redraw elements of the page if their styles change. The user is stuck viewing a blank white page.

The HTML specification clearly states that stylesheets are to be included in the HEAD of the page: "Unlike A, [LINK] may only appear in the HEAD section of a document, although it may appear any number of times." Neither of the alternatives, the blank white screen or flash of unstyled content, are worth the risk. The optimal solution is to follow the HTML specification and load your stylesheets in the document HEAD.

Put Scripts at the Bottom

The problem caused by scripts is that they block parallel downloads. The HTTP/1.1 specification suggests that browsers download no more than two components in parallel per hostname. If you serve your images from multiple hostnames, you can get more than two downloads to occur in parallel. While a script is downloading, however, the browser won't start any other downloads, even on different hostnames.

In some situations it's not easy to move scripts to the bottom. If, for example, the script uses document.write to insert part of the page's content, it can't be moved lower in the page. There might also be scoping issues. In many cases, there are ways to workaround these situations.

An alternative suggestion that often comes up is to use deferred scripts. The DEFER attribute indicates that the script does not contain document.write, and is a clue to browsers that they can continue rendering. Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't support the DEFER attute. In Internet Explorer, the script may be deferred, but not as much as desired. If a script can be deferred, it can also be moved to the bottom of the page. That will make your web pages load faster.

Avoid CSS Expressions

tag: css

CSS expressions are a powerful (and dangerous) way to set CSS properties dynamically. They're supported in Internet Explorer, starting with version 5. As an example, the background color could be set to alternate every hour using CSS expressions.

      background-color: expression( (new Date()).getHours()%2 ? "#B8D4FF" : "#F08A00" );

As shown here, the expression method accepts a JavaScript expression. The CSS property is set to the result of evaluating the JavaScript expression. The expression method is ignored by other browsers, so it is useful for setting properties in Internet Explorer needed to create a consistent experience across browsers.

The problem with expressions is that they are evaluated more frequently than most people expect. Not only are they evaluated when the page is rendered and resized, but also when the page is scrolled and even when the user moves the mouse over the page. Adding a counter to the CSS expression allows us to keep track of when and how often a CSS expression is evaluated. Moving the mouse around the page can easily generate more than 10,000 evaluations.

One way to reduce the number of times your CSS expression is evaluated is to use one-time expressions, where the first time the expression is evaluated it sets the style property to an explicit value, which replaces the CSS expression. If the style property must be set dynamically throughout the life of the page, using event handlers instead of CSS expressions is an alternative approach. If you must use CSS expressions, remember that they may be evaluated thousands of times and could affect the performance of your page.

Make JavaScript and CSS External

Many of these performance rules deal with how external components are managed. However, before these considerations arise you should ask a more basic question: Should JavaScript and CSS be contained in external files, or inlined in the page itself?

Using external files in the real world generally produces faster pages because the JavaScript and CSS files are cached by the browser. JavaScript and CSS that are inlined in HTML documents get downloaded every time the HTML document is requested. This reduces the number of HTTP requests that are needed, but increases the size of the HTML document. On the other hand, if the JavaScript and CSS are in external files cached by the browser, the size of the HTML document is reduced without increasing the number of HTTP requests.

The key factor, then, is the frequency with which external JavaScript and CSS components are cached relative to the number of HTML documents requested. This factor, although difficult to quantify, can be gauged using various metrics. If users on your site have multiple page views per session and many of your pages re-use the same scripts and stylesheets, there is a greater potential benefit from cached external files.

Many web sites fall in the middle of these metrics. For these sites, the best solution generally is to deploy the JavaScript and CSS as external files. The only exception where inlining is preferable is with home pages, such as Yahoo!'s front page and My Yahoo!. Home pages that have few (perhaps only one) page view per session may find that inlining JavaScript and CSS results in faster end-user response times.

For front pages that are typically the first of many page views, there are techniques that leverage the reduction of HTTP requests that inlining provides, as well as the caching benefits achieved through using external files. One such technique is to inline JavaScript and CSS in the front page, but dynamically download the external files after the page has finished loading. Subsequent pages would reference the external files that should already be in the browser's cache.

Reduce DNS Lookups

The Domain Name System (DNS) maps hostnames to IP addresses, just as phonebooks map people's names to their phone numbers. When you type www.yahoo.com into your browser, a DNS resolver contacted by the browser returns that server's IP address. DNS has a cost. It typically takes 20-120 milliseconds for DNS to lookup the IP address for a given hostname. The browser can't download anything from this hostname until the DNS lookup is completed.

DNS lookups are cached for better performance. This caching can occur on a special caching server, maintained by the user's ISP or local area network, but there is also caching that occurs on the individual user's computer. The DNS information remains in the operating system's DNS cache (the "DNS Client service" on Microsoft Windows). Most browsers have their own caches, separate from the operating system's cache. As long as the browser keeps a DNS record in its own cache, it doesn't bother the operating system with a request for the record.

Internet Explorer caches DNS lookups for 30 minutes by default, as specified by the DnsCacheTimeout registry setting. Firefox caches DNS lookups for 1 minute, controlled by the network.dnsCacheExpiration configuration setting. (Fasterfox changes this to 1 hour.)

When the client's DNS cache is empty (for both the browser and the operating system), the number of DNS lookups is equal to the number of unique hostnames in the web page. This includes the hostnames used in the page's URL, images, script files, stylesheets, Flash objects, etc. Reducing the number of unique hostnames reduces the number of DNS lookups.

Reducing the number of unique hostnames has the potential to reduce the amount of parallel downloading that takes place in the page. Avoiding DNS lookups cuts response times, but reducing parallel downloads may increase response times. My guideline is to split these components across at least two but no more than four hostnames. This results in a good compromise between reducing DNS lookups and allowing a high degree of parallel downloads.

Minify JavaScript and CSS

Minification is the practice of removing unnecessary characters from code to reduce its size thereby improving load times. When code is minified all comments are removed, as well as unneeded white space characters (space, newline, and tab). In the case of JavaScript, this improves response time performance because the size of the downloaded file is reduced. Two popular tools for minifying JavaScript code are JSMin and YUI Compressor. The YUI compressor can also minify CSS.

Obfuscation is an alternative optimization that can be applied to source code. It's more complex than minification and thus more likely to generate bugs as a result of the obfuscation step itself. In a survey of ten top U.S. web sites, minification achieved a 21% size reduction versus 25% for obfuscation. Although obfuscation has a higher size reduction, minifying JavaScript is less risky.

In addition to minifying external scripts and styles, inlined <script> and <style> blocks can and should also be minified. Even if you gzip your scripts and styles, minifying them will still reduce the size by 5% or more. As the use and size of JavaScript and CSS increases, so will the savings gained by minifying your code.

Avoid Redirects

tag: content

Redirects are accomplished using the 301 and 302 status codes. Here's an example of the HTTP headers in a 301 response:

      HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
      Location: http://example.com/newuri
      Content-Type: text/html

The browser automatically takes the user to the URL specified in the Location field. All the information necessary for a redirect is in the headers. The body of the response is typically empty. Despite their names, neither a 301 nor a 302 response is cached in practice unless additional headers, such as Expires or Cache-Control, indicate it should be. The meta refresh tag and JavaScript are other ways to direct users to a different URL, but if you must do a redirect, the preferred technique is to use the standard 3xx HTTP status codes, primarily to ensure the back button works correctly.

The main thing to remember is that redirects slow down the user experience. Inserting a redirect between the user and the HTML document delays everything in the page since nothing in the page can be rendered and no components can start being downloaded until the HTML document has arrived.

One of the most wasteful redirects happens frequently and web developers are generally not aware of it. It occurs when a trailing slash (/) is missing from a URL that should otherwise have one. For example, going to http://astrology.yahoo.com/astrology results in a 301 response containing a redirect to http://astrology.yahoo.com/astrology/ (notice the added trailing slash). This is fixed in Apache by using Alias or mod_rewrite, or the DirectorySlash directive if you're using Apache handlers.

Connecting an old web site to a new one is another common use for redirects. Others include connecting different parts of a website and directing the user based on certain conditions (type of browser, type of user account, etc.). Using a redirect to connect two web sites is simple and requires little additional coding. Although using redirects in these situations reduces the complexity for developers, it degrades the user experience. Alternatives for this use of redirects include using Alias and mod_rewrite if the two code paths are hosted on the same server. If a domain name change is the cause of using redirects, an alternative is to create a CNAME (a DNS record that creates an alias pointing from one domain name to another) in combination with Alias or mod_rewrite.

Remove Duplicate Scripts

It hurts performance to include the same JavaScript file twice in one page. This isn't as unusual as you might think. A review of the ten top U.S. web sites shows that two of them contain a duplicated script. Two main factors increase the odds of a script being duplicated in a single web page: team size and number of scripts. When it does happen, duplicate scripts hurt performance by creating unnecessary HTTP requests and wasted JavaScript execution.

Unnecessary HTTP requests happen in Internet Explorer, but not in Firefox. In Internet Explorer, if an external script is included twice and is not cacheable, it generates two HTTP requests during page loading. Even if the script is cacheable, extra HTTP requests occur when the user reloads the page.

In addition to generating wasteful HTTP requests, time is wasted evaluating the script multiple times. This redundant JavaScript execution happens in both Firefox and Internet Explorer, regardless of whether the script is cacheable.

One way to avoid accidentally including the same script twice is to implement a script management module in your templating system. The typical way to include a script is to use the SCRIPT tag in your HTML page.

      <script type="text/javascript" src="menu_1.0.17.js"></script>

An alternative in PHP would be to create a function called insertScript.

      <?php insertScript("menu.js") ?>

In addition to preventing the same script from being inserted multiple times, this function could handle other issues with scripts, such as dependency checking and adding version numbers to script filenames to support far future Expires headers.

Configure ETags

Entity tags (ETags) are a mechanism that web servers and browsers use to determine whether the component in the browser's cache matches the one on the origin server. (An "entity" is another word a "component": images, scripts, stylesheets, etc.) ETags were added to provide a mechanism for validating entities that is more flexible than the last-modified date. An ETag is a string that uniquely identifies a specific version of a component. The only format constraints are that the string be quoted. The origin server specifies the component's ETag using the ETag response header.

      HTTP/1.1 200 OK
      Last-Modified: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 03:03:59 GMT
      ETag: "10c24bc-4ab-457e1c1f"
      Content-Length: 12195

Later, if the browser has to validate a component, it uses the If-None-Match header to pass the ETag back to the origin server. If the ETags match, a 304 status code is returned reducing the response by 12195 bytes for this example.

      GET /i/yahoo.gif HTTP/1.1
      Host: us.yimg.com
      If-Modified-Since: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 03:03:59 GMT
      If-None-Match: "10c24bc-4ab-457e1c1f"
      HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified

The problem with ETags is that they typically are constructed using attributes that make them unique to a specific server hosting a site. ETags won't match when a browser gets the original component from one server and later tries to validate that component on a different server, a situation that is all too common on Web sites that use a cluster of servers to handle requests. By default, both Apache and IIS embed data in the ETag that dramatically reduces the odds of the validity test succeeding on web sites with multiple servers.

The ETag format for Apache 1.3 and 2.x is inode-size-timestamp. Although a given file may reside in the same directory across multiple servers, and have the same file size, permissions, timestamp, etc., its inode is different from one server to the next.

IIS 5.0 and 6.0 have a similar issue with ETags. The format for ETags on IIS is Filetimestamp:ChangeNumber. A ChangeNumber is a counter used to track configuration changes to IIS. It's unlikely that the ChangeNumber is the same across all IIS servers behind a web site.

The end result is ETags generated by Apache and IIS for the exact same component won't match from one server to another. If the ETags don't match, the user doesn't receive the small, fast 304 response that ETags were designed for; instead, they'll get a normal 200 response along with all the data for the component. If you host your web site on just one server, this isn't a problem. But if you have multiple servers hosting your web site, and you're using Apache or IIS with the default ETag configuration, your users are getting slower pages, your servers have a higher load, you're consuming greater bandwidth, and proxies aren't caching your content efficiently. Even if your components have a far future Expires header, a conditional GET request is still made whenever the user hits Reload or Refresh.

If you're not taking advantage of the flexible validation model that ETags provide, it's better to just remove the ETag altogether. The Last-Modified header validates based on the component's timestamp. And removing the ETag reduces the size of the HTTP headers in both the response and subsequent requests. This Microsoft Support article describes how to remove ETags. In Apache, this is done by simply adding the following line to your Apache configuration file:

      FileETag none

Make Ajax Cacheable

One of the cited benefits of Ajax is that it provides instantaneous feedback to the user because it requests information asynchronously from the backend web server. However, using Ajax is no guarantee that the user won't be twiddling his thumbs waiting for those asynchronous JavaScript and XML responses to return. In many applications, whether or not the user is kept waiting depends on how Ajax is used. For example, in a web-based email client the user will be kept waiting for the results of an Ajax request to find all the email messages that match their search criteria. It's important to remember that "asynchronous" does not imply "instantaneous".

To improve performance, it's important to optimize these Ajax responses. The most important way to improve the performance of Ajax is to make the responses cacheable, Some of the other rules also apply to Ajax:

Let's look at an example. A Web 2.0 email client might use Ajax to download the user's address book for autocompletion. If the user hasn't modified her address book since the last time she used the email web app, the previous address book response could be read from cache if that Ajax response was made cacheable with a future Expires or Cache-Control header. The browser must be informed when to use a previously cached address book response versus requesting a new one. This could be done by adding a timestamp to the address book Ajax URL indicating the last time the user modified her address book, for example, &t=1190241612. If the address book hasn't been modified since the last download, the timestamp will be the same and the address book will be read from the browser's cache eliminating an extra HTTP roundtrip. If the user has modified her address book, the timestamp ensures the new URL doesn't match the cached response, and the browser will request the updated address book entries.

Even though your Ajax responses are created dynamically, and might only be applicable to a single user, they can still be cached. Doing so will make your Web 2.0 apps faster.

Flush the Buffer Early

When users request a page, it can take anywhere from 200 to 500ms for the backend server to stitch together the HTML page. During this time, the browser is idle as it waits for the data to arrive. In PHP you have the function flush(). It allows you to send your partially ready HTML response to the browser so that the browser can start fetching components while your backend is busy with the rest of the HTML page. The benefit is mainly seen on busy backends or light frontends.

A good place to consider flushing is right after the HEAD because the HTML for the head is usually easier to produce and it allows you to include any CSS and JavaScript files for the browser to start fetching in parallel while the backend is still processing.

Example:

      ... <!-- css, js -->
    </head>
    <?php flush(); ?>
    <body>
      ... <!-- content -->

Yahoo! search pioneered research and real user testing to prove the benefits of using this technique.