Clickjacking in the Modern Era: Analyzing Emerging Attack Vectors and Advanced Defense Strategies

Clickjacking is a well-known vulnerability in web security, and a valid concern in an era of increasingly complex web applications. The depth of this attack, the threat landscape it presents, and potential mitigation strategies are evolving. This threat has escalated significantly with proliferation of advanced technologies and expansion of attack surface beyond traditional web such as mobile application, internet-of-things (IoT) to name a few. While security professionals may view this as a solved problem, curiously the conversation continues to swaddle in hope of finding new vectors of attack, novel environments, or clever mitigation strategies to address the gaps in existing defenses. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of how this classic attack vector has evolved beyond traditional web browsers to exploit emerging technologies and platforms. This paper reviews the existing and the new ways of solving this problem with comprehensive methodologies and result analysis. At the end the paper proposes a dual method of detection and prevention of this problem using convolutional neural network (CNN) and HTTP header. This research provides security professionals actionable insights to protect modern applications against Clickjacking threats.