drupal-security

Drupal Security

Critical Security Patterns

SQL Injection Prevention

NEVER concatenate user input into queries:

// VULNERABLE - SQL injection
$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE name = '" . $name . "'";
$result = $connection->query($query);

// SAFE - parameterized query
$result = $connection->select('users', 'u')
  ->fields('u')
  ->condition('name', $name)
  ->execute();

// SAFE - placeholder
$result = $connection->query(
  'SELECT * FROM {users} WHERE name = :name',
  [':name' => $name]
);

XSS Prevention

Always escape output. Trust the render system:

// VULNERABLE - raw HTML output
return ['#markup' => $user_input];
return ['#markup' => '<div>' . $title . '</div>'];

// SAFE - plain text (auto-escaped)
return ['#plain_text' => $user_input];

// SAFE - use proper render elements
return [
  '#type' => 'html_tag',
  '#tag' => 'div',
  '#value' => $title,  // Escaped automatically
];

// SAFE - Twig auto-escapes
{{ variable }}  // Escaped
{{ variable|raw }}  // DANGEROUS - only for trusted HTML

For admin-only content:

use Drupal\Component\Utility\Xss;

// Filter but allow safe HTML tags
$safe = Xss::filterAdmin($user_html);

Note: Never pass untrusted user input into #markup. Prefer #plain_text, Twig auto-escaping, or safe render elements.

Access Control

Always verify permissions:

// In routing.yml
my_module.admin:
  path: '/admin/my-module'
  requirements:
    _permission: 'administer my_module'  # Required!

// In code
if (!$this->currentUser->hasPermission('administer my_module')) {
  throw new AccessDeniedHttpException();
}

// Entity queries - check access!
$query = $this->entityTypeManager
  ->getStorage('node')
  ->getQuery()
  ->accessCheck(TRUE)  // CRITICAL - never FALSE unless intentional
  ->condition('type', 'article');

CSRF Protection

Forms automatically include CSRF tokens. For custom AJAX:

// Include token in AJAX requests
$build['#attached']['drupalSettings']['myModule']['token'] =
  \Drupal::csrfToken()->get('my_module_action');

Note: Prefer dependency injection over direct \Drupal::service() or \Drupal:: calls in classes.