We've been using Laravel for nearly a decade now, and it has certainly made our development process smoother, especially with its emphasis on security. Laravel provides built-in features to help defend against security vulnerabilities. 

In this article, we'll take a closer look at these common Laravel security features and the steps they take to create a safer digital environment.

Password Hashing

Laravel uses Bcrypt to securely hash the sensitive data and user passwords into a cryptographic representation that is more secure and cannot be easily reversed before storing them in the database. 

It is a secure, one-way cryptographic function that is specifically designed for hashing passwords. It uses a salt and a key derivation function, making it more difficult for attackers to crack the hash, even with powerful computing resources.

CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) Protection

Another feature to mention when talking about how secure is Laravel is its automatic generation and validation of CSRF tokens that play a significant role in ensuring protection against cross-site request forgery attacks. For this, Laravel creates and integrates a valid token into every request as an AJAX call.

When the request is invoked, Laravel compares the request token with the one saved in the user’s session. If the token does not match, the request is classified as invalid, and no further action is executed.

Input Sanitization

Laravel uses input validation and sanitization to address security vulnerabilities like SQL injection and XSS attacks.

Laravel’s Eloquent ORM uses PDO binding that protects from SQL injections; it helps prevent SQL injection attacks caused by malicious SQL queries. This feature ensures that no client can modify the intent of the SQL queries.

Laravel also offers native support that protects the code from XSS attacks; this feature kicks in automatically and protects the database in the process. As a result, any code that contains escape tags is outputted as HTML.

Session Protection

If the question “is Laravel secure?” remains, we should note that Laravel takes the security of user sessions especially seriously and implements several measures to protect them from threats such as session hijacking, session fixation, and more.

 Laravel implements several security measures to protect user sessions, including:

• Automatic Generation of Session ID: Laravel generates a unique session ID for each user session and stores it in a cookie on the user's browser. The session ID is automatically regenerated whenever sensitive information such as login credentials is updated.
• Encryption of Session Data: Laravel uses encryption to store sensitive information in the user session. This helps ensure that the data is secure and cannot be easily accessed by attackers.
• Session Expiration: Laravel sets an expiration time for each user session. When the session expires, the user is automatically logged out, which helps prevent session hijacking attacks.
• Session Fixation Prevention: Laravel automatically regenerates the session ID whenever the user logs in, which also helps prevent session fixation threats.

In addition to these Laravel security measures, Laravel also provides several configuration options that allow developers to customize how sessions are managed. For example, developers can configure the length of time a session should remain active, the encryption algorithm used to encrypt session data, and the storage backend used to store session data.

In conclusion, Laravel provides a robust and secure session management system that helps protect user sessions from various security threats.

Access control

Laravel's built-in authorization and authentication features allow developers to easily restrict access to certain parts of the application based on user permissions and roles.

Laravel provides several tools and techniques to implement access control in a web application, including:

• Middleware: Middleware in Laravel is a layer between the request and the response, which can be used to filter and control access to certain parts of the application. For example, you can create a middleware that only allows authenticated users to access certain routes.
• Gates: Gates in Laravel provide an interface for defining simple authorization checks. You can use gates to determine whether a user is allowed to perform a certain action, such as creating or editing a resource.
• Policies: Policies in Laravel provide a more comprehensive approach to access control by grouping authorization logic into reusable classes. For example, you can create a policy that only allows users with a certain role to access certain resources.
• Roles and Permissions: Laravel provides a convenient way to define roles and permissions for users. You can assign roles to users and then use gates and policies to check if a user has a specific role or permission before allowing them to access certain parts of the application.

When performing a Laravel security check, it's essential to consider the access control measures in place. Laravel makes it easy to implement complex access control rules by using a combination of middleware, gates, policies, and roles and permissions. This makes it possible to build secure, flexible, and scalable applications that adapt to changing business requirements.

Community Support & Release Cycles

Besides the standard Laravel security features, it's essential to emphasize the exceptional community support that backs it up. With over 72.6K followers, the Laravel community is like a watchful guardian, constantly updating and fixing any bugs to keep the framework safe and sound.

And that's not all - the Laravel team constantly releases updates, with major ones dropping yearly and minor ones as often as weekly. So, any vulnerabilities or glitches are quickly addressed, ensuring that the framework remains stable. With the support of dedicated developers, testers, and pen-testers, Laravel's codebase is kept on lock, making it one of the most secure frameworks out there.

Summing Up

In conclusion, Laravel puts a lot of emphasis on application safety. It provides a range of built-in features to protect against common security vulnerabilities, such as password hashing, CSRF protection, input sanitization, and session protection. The framework uses Bcrypt to hash passwords, generates and validates CSRF tokens, uses PDO binding and escape tags to prevent SQL injection and XSS attacks, and offers several options to encrypt and manage user sessions securely. So you can sleep peacefully knowing your project is safe and sound on Laravel.

Stay safe y’all ?