XSS: From Theory to Practical Exploitation
Cross-site scripting is twenty-five years old and still topping bug bounty payouts. Modern frameworks make trivial reflected XSS rare — but the bug class evolved, not disappeared. Here’s the 2026 view. The Three Flavors Type Where the payload lives Trigger Reflected URL or form, echoed in response Victim clicks crafted link Stored Database, served back to other users Victim visits an infected page DOM-based Sink in client-side JS reads a source Anything that influences the source Stored XSS is highest impact (often worm-able). DOM XSS dominates modern SPAs because so much state lives in the browser. ...