Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) is a critical security mechanism in web applications. While designed to protect users, misconfigurations can inadvertently open doors for malicious actors. This article delves into how hackers exploit CORS misconfigurations and offers guidance on safeguarding your applications.

CORS is a browser security feature that restricts web pages from making requests to a different domain than the one that served the web page. This policy helps prevent malicious websites from accessing sensitive data on another domain through the user’s browser.

When a web application needs to request resources from a different domain, it can use CORS headers to specify which domains are allowed to access its resources. For example:

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://trusted.com

This header tells the browser that https://trusted.com is permitted to access the resources.