Security for Vibe-Coded Social Media Apps
Social media apps combine user-generated content, complex authentication, and large user bases — creating a wide attack surface. XSS through user content is the most common vulnerability in vibe-coded social apps.
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Why Security Matters for Social Media Applications
Social platforms accept user input at scale — posts, comments, profiles, messages. Every input field is a potential XSS vector. AI-generated code often renders user content without sanitization, creating stored XSS vulnerabilities that affect every user who views the malicious content. Privacy is also critical. Users share personal information, direct messages, and location data. Broken access controls can expose private profiles, leak DMs, or reveal user activity to unauthorized parties. Social apps also face abuse at scale: spam, fake accounts, harassment, and automated scraping of user data.
Security Risks
Stored XSS through user content
criticalMalicious scripts injected through posts, comments, or profile fields execute in other users' browsers.
Mitigation
Sanitize all user-generated HTML. Use a library like DOMPurify for rich text. Implement Content Security Policy headers to limit script execution.
Private content exposure
highDirect messages, private profiles, and blocked user content accessible through API manipulation.
Mitigation
Enforce privacy settings at the database level with RLS. Verify access permissions on every content request, not just in the UI.
Account enumeration
mediumLogin and registration endpoints revealing which email addresses have accounts.
Mitigation
Return generic error messages for login failures. Don't differentiate between "user not found" and "wrong password."
Security Checklist
Strip or escape HTML/JS from posts, comments, bios, and any user input displayed to others.
Restrict script sources to prevent XSS even if sanitization is bypassed.
Private profiles, DMs, and blocked user content enforced at API/database level.
Prevent spam bots from flooding the platform with content.
Validate image/video uploads for file type, size, and malicious content.
Allow users to report content and have a queue for moderation review.
Real-World Scenario
A developer builds a community forum using v0 and Supabase. Users can post rich text with formatting. The AI-generated code renders posts using dangerouslySetInnerHTML to preserve formatting. An attacker posts a message containing a script tag that steals session cookies and sends them to their server. Every user who views the post has their session hijacked.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I prevent XSS in user posts?
Never render user HTML directly. Use a sanitization library like DOMPurify to strip dangerous tags and attributes while preserving formatting. Combine with a strict Content Security Policy header.
Should I allow HTML in user content?
Only if you have robust sanitization. For most social apps, Markdown is safer — you control the rendering and there's no risk of injected scripts. Libraries like react-markdown handle this safely.
How do I handle private vs public profiles?
Enforce visibility at the database level using RLS policies. A policy like "users can view profiles where visibility = public OR viewer_id = auth.uid()" ensures private profiles stay private regardless of API manipulation.
Security for Other Use Cases
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