Methods and systems for cross-site scripting (XSS) defense are described herein. An embodiment includes, embedding one or more tags in content at a server to identify executable and non-executable regions in the content and transmitting the content with the tags to a client based on a request from the client. Another embodiment includes receiving content embedded with one or more permission tags from a server, processing the content and the permission tags, and granting permission to a browser to execute executable content in the content based on the permission tags. A method embodiment also includes receiving content embedded with one or more verify tags from a server, performing an integrity check using the verify tags and granting permission to a browser to execute executable content in the content based on the integrity check.