tl;dr; About the Same Origin Policy
I have a Grunt process which initiates an instance of express.js server. This was working absolutely fine up until just now when it started serving a blank page with the following appearing in the error log in the developer's console in Chrome (latest version):
XMLHttpRequest cannot load https://www.example.com/
No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested
resource. Origin 'http://localhost:4300' is therefore not allowed access.
What is stopping me from accessing the page?
tl;dr — When you want to read data, (mostly) using client-side JS, from a different server you need the server with the data to grant explicit permission to the code that wants the data.
There's a summary at the end and headings in the answer to make it easier to find the relevant parts. Reading everything is recommended though as it provides useful background for understanding the why that makes seeing how the how applies in different circumstances easier.
About the Same Origin Policy
This is the Same Origin Policy. It is a security feature implemented by browsers.
Your particular case is showing how it is implemented for XMLHttpRequest (and you'll get identical results if you were to use fetch), but it also applies to other things (such as images loaded onto a <canvas> or documents loaded into an <iframe>), just with slightly different implementations.
The standard scenario that demonstrates the need for the SOP can be demonstrated with three characters:
Alice is a person with a web browser
Bob runs a website (https://www.example.com/ in your example)
Mallory runs a website (http://localhost:4300 in your example)
Alice is logged into Bob's site and has some confidential data there. Perhaps it is a company intranet (accessible only to browsers on the LAN), or her online banking (accessible only with a cookie you get after entering a username and password).
Alice visits Mallory's website which has some JavaScript that causes Alice's browser to make an HTTP request to Bob's website (from her IP address with her cookies, etc). This could be as simple as using XMLHttpRequest and reading the responseText.
The browser's Same Origin Policy prevents that JavaScript from reading the data returned by Bob's website (which Bob and Alice don't want Mallory to access). (Note that you can, for example, display an image using an <img> element across origins because the content of the image is not exposed to JavaScript (or Mallory) … unless you throw canvas into the mix in which case you will generate a same-origin violation error).
Why the Same Origin Policy applies when you don't think it should
For any given URL it is possible that the SOP is not needed. A couple of common scenarios where this is the case are:
Alice, Bob, and Mallory are the same person.
Bob is providing entirely public information
… but the browser has no way of knowing if either of the above is true, so trust is not automatic and the SOP is applied. Permission has to be granted explicitly before the browser will give the data it has received from Bob to some other website.
Why the Same Origin Policy applies to JavaScript in a web page but little else
Outside the web page
Browser extensions*, the Network tab in browser developer tools, and applications like Postman are installed software. They aren't passing data from one website to the JavaScript belonging to a different website just because you visited that different website. Installing software usually takes a more conscious choice.
There isn't a third party (Mallory) who is considered a risk.
* Browser extensions do need to be written carefully to avoid cross-origin issues. See the Chrome documentation for example.
Inside the webpage
Most of the time, there isn't a great deal of information leakage when just showing something on a webpage.
If you use an <img> element to load an image, then it gets shown on the page, but very little information is exposed to Mallory. JavaScript can't read the image (unless you use a crossOrigin attribute to explicitly enable request permission with CORS) and then copy it to her server.
That said, some information does leak so, to quote Domenic Denicola (of Google):
The web's fundamental security model is the same origin policy. We
have several legacy exceptions to that rule from before that security
model was in place, with script tags being one of the most egregious
and most dangerous. (See the various "JSONP" attacks.)
Many years ago, perhaps with the introduction of XHR or web fonts (I
can't recall precisely), we drew a line in the sand, and said no new
web platform features would break the same origin policy. The existing
features need to be grandfathered in and subject to carefully-honed
and oft-exploited exceptions, for the sake of not breaking the web,
but we certainly can't add any more holes to our security policy.
This is why you need CORS permission to load fonts across origins.
Why you can display data on the page without reading it with JS
There are a number of circumstances where Mallory's site can cause a browser to fetch data from a third party and display it (e.g. by adding an <img> element to display an image). It isn't possible for Mallory's JavaScript to read the data in that resource though, only Alice's browser and Bob's server can do that, so it is still secure.
CORS
The Access-Control-Allow-Origin HTTP response header referred to in the error message is part of the CORS standard which allows Bob to explicitly grant permission to Mallory's site to access the data via Alice's browser.
A basic implementation would just include:
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
… in the response headers to permit any website to read the data.
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://example.com
… would allow only a specific site to access it, and Bob can dynamically generate that based on the Origin request header to permit multiple, but not all, sites to access it.
The specifics of how Bob sets that response header depend on Bob's HTTP server and/or server-side programming language. Users of Node.js/Express.js should use the well-documented CORS middleware. Users of other platforms should take a look at this collection of guides for various common configurations that might help.
NB: Some requests are complex and send a preflight OPTIONS request that the server will have to respond to before the browser will send the GET/POST/PUT/Whatever request that the JS wants to make. Implementations of CORS that only add Access-Control-Allow-Origin to specific URLs often get tripped up by this.
Obviously granting permission via CORS is something Bob would only do only if either:
The data was not private or
Mallory was trusted
How do I add these headers?
It depends on your server-side environment.
If you can, use a library designed to handle CORS as they will present you with simple options instead of having to deal with everything manually.
Enable-Cors.org has a list of documentation for specific platforms and frameworks that you might find useful.
But I'm not Bob!
There is no standard mechanism for Mallory to add this header because it has to come from Bob's website, which she does not control.
If Bob is running a public API then there might be a mechanism to turn on CORS (perhaps by formatting the request in a certain way, or a config option after logging into a Developer Portal site for Bob's site). This will have to be a mechanism implemented by Bob though. Mallory could read the documentation on Bob's site to see if something is available, or she could talk to Bob and ask him to implement CORS.
Error messages which mention "Response for preflight"
Some cross-origin requests are preflighted.
This happens when (roughly speaking) you try to make a cross-origin request that:
Includes credentials like cookies
Couldn't be generated with a regular HTML form (e.g. has custom headers or a Content-Type that you couldn't use in a form's enctype).
If you are correctly doing something that needs a preflight
In these cases then the rest of this answer still applies but you also need to make sure that the server can listen for the preflight request (which will be OPTIONS (and not GET, POST, or whatever you were trying to send) and respond to it with the right Access-Control-Allow-Origin header but also Access-Control-Allow-Methods and Access-Control-Allow-Headers to allow your specific HTTP methods or headers.
If you are triggering a preflight by mistake
Sometimes people make mistakes when trying to construct Ajax requests, and sometimes these trigger the need for a preflight. If the API is designed to allow cross-origin requests but doesn't require anything that would need a preflight, then this can break access.
Common mistakes that trigger this include:
trying to put Access-Control-Allow-Origin and other CORS response headers on the request. These don't belong on the request, don't do anything helpful (what would be the point of a permissions system where you could grant yourself permission?), and must appear only on the response.
trying to put a Content-Type: application/json header on a GET request that has no request body the content of which to describe (typically when the author confuses Content-Type and Accept).
In either of these cases, removing the extra request header will often be enough to avoid the need for a preflight (which will solve the problem when communicating with APIs that support simple requests but not preflighted requests).
Opaque responses (no-cors mode)
Sometimes you need to make an HTTP request, but you don't need to read the response. e.g. if you are posting a log message to the server for recording.
If you are using the fetch API (rather than XMLHttpRequest), then you can configure it to not try to use CORS.
Note that this won't let you do anything that you require CORS to do. You will not be able to read the response. You will not be able to make a request that requires a preflight.
It will let you make a simple request, not see the response, and not fill the Developer Console with error messages.
How to do it is explained by the Chrome error message given when you make a request using fetch and don't get permission to view the response with CORS:
Access to fetch at 'https://example.com/' from origin 'https://example.net' has been blocked by CORS policy: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. If an opaque response serves your needs, set the request's mode to 'no-cors' to fetch the resource with CORS disabled.
Thus:
fetch("http://example.com", { mode: "no-cors" });
Alternatives to CORS
JSONP
Bob could also provide the data using a hack like JSONP which is how people did cross-origin Ajax before CORS came along.
It works by presenting the data in the form of a JavaScript program that injects the data into Mallory's page.
It requires that Mallory trust Bob not to provide malicious code.
Note the common theme: The site providing the data has to tell the browser that it is OK for a third-party site to access the data it is sending to the browser.
Since JSONP works by appending a <script> element to load the data in the form of a JavaScript program that calls a function already in the page, attempting to use the JSONP technique on a URL that returns JSON will fail — typically with a CORB error — because JSON is not JavaScript.
Move the two resources to a single Origin
If the HTML document the JS runs in and the URL being requested are on the same origin (sharing the same scheme, hostname, and port) then the Same Origin Policy grants permission by default. CORS is not needed.
A Proxy
Mallory could use server-side code to fetch the data (which she could then pass from her server to Alice's browser through HTTP as usual).
It will either:
add CORS headers
convert the response to JSONP
exist on the same origin as the HTML document
That server-side code could be written & hosted by a third party (such as CORS Anywhere). Note the privacy implications of this: The third party can monitor who proxies what across their servers.
Bob wouldn't need to grant any permissions for that to happen.
There are no security implications here since that is just between Mallory and Bob. There is no way for Bob to think that Mallory is Alice and to provide Mallory with data that should be kept confidential between Alice and Bob.
Consequently, Mallory can only use this technique to read public data.
Do note, however, that taking content from someone else's website and displaying it on your own might be a violation of copyright and open you up to legal action.
Writing something other than a web app
As noted in the section "Why the Same Origin Policy only applies to JavaScript in a web page", you can avoid the SOP by not writing JavaScript in a webpage.
That doesn't mean you can't continue to use JavaScript and HTML, but you could distribute it using some other mechanism, such as Node-WebKit or PhoneGap.
Browser extensions
It is possible for a browser extension to inject the CORS headers in the response before the Same Origin Policy is applied.
These can be useful for development but are not practical for a production site (asking every user of your site to install a browser extension that disables a security feature of their browser is unreasonable).
They also tend to work only with simple requests (failing when handling preflight OPTIONS requests).
Having a proper development environment with a local development server
is usually a better approach.
Other security risks
Note that SOP / CORS do not mitigate XSS, CSRF, or SQL Injection attacks which need to be handled independently.
Summary
There is nothing you can do in your client-side code that will enable CORS access to someone else's server.
If you control the server the request is being made to: Add CORS permissions to it.
If you are friendly with the person who controls it: Get them to add CORS permissions to it.
If it is a public service:
Read their API documentation to see what they say about accessing it with client-side JavaScript:
They might tell you to use specific URLs
They might support JSONP
They might not support cross-origin access from client-side code at all (this might be a deliberate decision on security grounds, especially if you have to pass a personalized API Key in each request).
Make sure you aren't triggering a preflight request you don't need. The API might grant permission for simple requests but not preflighted requests.
If none of the above apply: Get the browser to talk to your server instead, and then have your server fetch the data from the other server and pass it on. (There are also third-party hosted services that attach CORS headers to publically accessible resources that you could use).
Target server must allowed cross-origin request. In order to allow it through express, simply handle http options request :
app.options('/url...', function(req, res, next){
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Origin', "*");
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Methods', 'POST');
res.header("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "accept, content-type");
res.header("Access-Control-Max-Age", "1728000");
return res.sendStatus(200);
});
As this isn't mentioned in the accepted answer.
This is not the case for this exact question, but might help others that search for that problem
This is something you can do in your client-code to prevent CORS errors in some cases.
You can make use of Simple Requests.
In order to perform a 'Simple Requests' the request needs to meet several conditions. E.g. only allowing POST, GET and HEAD method, as well as only allowing some given Headers (you can find all conditions here).
If your client code does not explicit set affected Headers (e.g. "Accept") with a fix value in the request it might occur that some clients do set these Headers automatically with some "non-standard" values causing the server to not accept it as Simple Request - which will give you a CORS error.
This is happening because of the CORS error. CORS stands for Cross Origin Resource Sharing. In simple words, this error occurs when we try to access a domain/resource from another domain.
Read More about it here: CORS error with jquery
To fix this, if you have access to the other domain, you will have to allow Access-Control-Allow-Origin in the server. This can be added in the headers. You can enable this for all the requests/domains or a specific domain.
How to get a cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) post request working
These links may help
This CORS issue wasn't further elaborated (for other causes).
I'm having this issue currently under different reason.
My front end is returning 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header error as well.
Just that I've pointed the wrong URL so this header wasn't reflected properly (in which i kept presume it did). localhost (front end) -> call to non secured http (supposed to be https), make sure the API end point from front end is pointing to the correct protocol.
I got the same error in Chrome console.
My problem was, I was trying to go to the site using http:// instead of https://. So there was nothing to fix, just had to go to the same site using https.
This bug cost me 2 days. I checked my Server log, the Preflight Option request/response between browser Chrome/Edge and Server was ok. The main reason is that GET/POST/PUT/DELETE server response for XHTMLRequest must also have the following header:
access-control-allow-origin: origin
"origin" is in the request header (Browser will add it to request for you). for example:
Origin: http://localhost:4221
you can add response header like the following to accept for all:
access-control-allow-origin: *
or response header for a specific request like:
access-control-allow-origin: http://localhost:4221
The message in browsers is not clear to understand: "...The requested resource"
note that:
CORS works well for localhost. different port means different Domain.
if you get error message, check the CORS config on the server side.
In most housing services just add in the .htaccess on the target server folder this:
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin 'https://your.site.folder'
I had the same issue. In my case i fixed it by adding addition parameter of timestamp to my URL. Even this was not required by the server I was accessing.
Example yoururl.com/yourdocument?timestamp=1234567
Note: I used epos timestamp
"Get" request with appending headers transform to "Options" request. So Cors policy problems occur. You have to implement "Options" request to your server. Cors Policy about server side and you need to allow Cors Policy on your server side. For Nodejs server:details
app.use(cors)
For Java to integrate with Angular:details
#CrossOrigin(origins = "http://localhost:4200")
You should enable CORS to get it working.
I'm building an app with Phonegap. It simply reads xml feeds to display latest articles uploaded by a school for parents to read.
There will be an option where each user of the app can decide whether they want to receive Push Notifications or not. I have a simple database table where the device's registration i.d. from Google Cloud Console is stored. When the user clicks "yes", the registration i.d. is generated and stored on the server. If they then click "no", it's deleted. I want to secure these call to the server with basic HTTP authentification.
Any documentation I have seen on basic authentification describes the sending of username and passwords. But with my application, there is no username or password as the users do not need to sign up. What do I send to authenticate the client? Would there be a key hard-coded on the client side and sent with each request? Couln't this be easily exposed by unpacking the .apk?
I object to the premise of the question. I actually see this as less a security issue and more a preferences issue. Understanding the distinction makes the development of your feature much easier.
Simply modify your application to allow the user to configure what he or she wants to see in the settings and then store the preferences wherever you want on the client (like local storage). The server can then push as before, but the app should simply refuse to render those pushes that the user doesn't want to see.
If you want to simply disseminate non-sensitive content to the users who want to see it, this is a preferences issue and/or a publish/subscribe issue. But it is not a security issue.
Since you have access to server side, you have the control of the whole process. So, in order to handle that, you may think about something like session cookies that a web server creates in case of normal authentication.
I have done something similar and what I've done is to generate a kind of token server side that is stored in the cookies of the device or the localStorage.
So the process flow should be something like this :
Generate a token and store it on the device (cookies or local storage).
For each request, send this value in a http header
From server side, you may identify the user from that token.
For example : you maintain a table that identifies device/token.
That's it
In addition to what the other answers said you can pass a custom useragent string as part of the requests, and validate it matches what you expect. It's not a sure way to 'secure' requests, but along with a (simple) token system and HTTPS this could be enough for your needs.
Want to access data from external service for a facebook application. Not getting a solution on how to do the same.
Facebook apps are iframes inside Facebook. If your application has it's own server-side code, you can access that external service from the server and send the results to the client.
If you don't have your own server-side code, relying on Facebook objects for persistence, than you can access the remote service from the client via JavaScript - but there is a "but". Browsers usually only allow JavaScript to send requests to the domain where the page came from, and obviously your app is not served from the domain of the external service(otherwise it wouldn't be "external"). That means your users will have to set the security options in their browsers to allow access to remote domains - which means you'll have to supply instructions on how to do that, and we all know how good users are at following instructions... Also, having to change security options might scare away some users.
So - if possible, try to do it from your server-side.
I'm retrofitting my application with GWT History support, and I've stumbled on a case where I'm not quite sure what to do. The answer to this question doesn't necessarily have to be GWT-related.
GWT's History support functions by passing around hash tags (i.e. index.html#token). Security restrictions require users be logged in prior to actually being able to access index.html, so they get sent over to a login page, retaining the token (login.html#token). So far, so good. Now the user becomes authenticated and Spring sends them over to index.html (the default target) and eliminates the #token part of the URL.
How can I force Spring Security to maintain the token and send my newly authenticated user to the page they requested (index.html#token)? Since I've already got Spring Security authentication working, I'd prefer to not restructure the way my app handles logins.
After a great deal of digging, I found my answer on Spring's Jira. As Colin Alworth stated, that token isn't actually part of the request, so Spring Security never sees it server-side, and thus can't use it to determine the final URL. So the approach I used was to append the hash (client-side) to j_spring_security_check, making it j_spring_security_check#token. Now the token gets passed along just fine, allowing me to have a well-secured app with working tokens.
Thanks for your help Colin, your answer got me thinking in the right direction.
The server doesn't get to see this token as part of the GET/POST request as you've noted, it is only seen by the browser. Best fix that I've seen for this in the past is for the login page to take note of the current window.location.hash, and pass that along, either along with the login form (assuming a redirect will take place that keeps the hash around), or to the server as a login param so it can redirect properly.
Here's what happens, it might help you solve the problem:
sending unauthenticated users from index.html to login.html is most
likely implemented as an HTTP 3xx redirect, and that's why the
browser keeps the hash fragment (#token).
Once they login, spring sends them from login.html to index.html not
via 3xx redirect so the browser doesn't keep the token.
One solution would be to inject the token into index.html, and pick it up with GWT. Another one is to make login.html -> index.html a 3xx redirect (if spring allows that).
I'm developing a small CMS in PHP and we're putting on social integration.
The content is changed by a single administrator who as right for publishing news, events and so on...
I'd to add this feature, when the admin publishes something it's already posted on facebook wall. I'm not very familiar with facebook php SDK, and i'm a little bit confused about it.
If (make it an example) 10 different sites are using my CMS, do I have to create 10 different facebook application? (let's assume the 10 websites are all in different domains and servers)
2nd, is there a way for authenticating with just PHP (something like sending username&password directly) so that the user does not need to be logged on facebook?
thanks
You might want to break up your question in to smaller understandable units. Its very difficult to understand what you are driving at.
My understanding of your problem could be minimal, but here goes...
1_ No you do not create 10 different facebook application. Create a single facebook application and make it a service entry point. So that all your cms sites could talk to this one site to interact with facebook. ( A REST service layer).
2_ Facebook api does not support username and password authentication. They only support oauth2.0. Although Oauth is not trivial, but since they have provided library for that, implementing authentication is pretty trivial.
Please read up on http://developers.facebook.com/docs/.
Its really easy and straight forward and well explained.
Your question is so vague and extensive that it cannot be answered well here.
If you experience any specific implementation problems, this is the right place.
However to answer atleast a part of your question:
The most powerful tool when working with facebook applications is the Graph API.
Its principle is very simple. You can do almonst any action on behalf of any user or application. You have to generate a token first that identifies the user and the proper permissions. Those tokens can be made "permanent" so you can do background tasks. Usually they are only active a very short time so you can perform actions while interacting with the user. The process of generating tokens involves the user so that he/she has to confirm the privileges you are asking for.
For websites that publish something automatically you would probably generate a permanent token one time that is active as long as you remove the app in your privacy settings.
Basically yuo can work with any application on any website. There is no limitation. However there are two ways of generating tokens. One involves on an additional request and one is done client side, which is bound to one domain oyu specifiedin your apps settings.
Addendum:
#ArtoAle
you are right about every app beeing assighend to exactly one domain. however once you obtained a valid token it doesnt matter from where or who you use it within the graph api.
let me expalin this a little bit:
it would make no sense since it is you doing the request. there is no such thing as "where the request is coming from". of course there is the "referer" header information, but it can be freely specified and is not used in any context of this.
the domain you enter in your apps settings only restricts where facebook redirects the user to.
why?
this ensures that some bad guy cannot set up a website on any domain and let the user authorize an app and get an access token with YOUR application.
so this setting ensures that the user and the access token are redirected back to YOUR site and not to another bad site.
but there is an alternative. if you use the control flow for desktop applications you don't get an access token right after the user has been redirected back. you get a temporary SESSION-TOKEN that you can EXCCHANGE for an access token. this exchange is done server side over the REST api and requires your application secret. So at this point it is ensured that it is YOU who gets the token.
This method can be done on any domain or in case of desktop applications on no domain at all.
This is a quote from the faceboo docs:
To convert sessions, send a POST
request to
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/exchange_sessions
with a comma-separated list of
sessions you want to convert:
curl client_id=your_app_id \
-F client_secret=your_app_secret \
-F sessions=2.DbavCpzL6Yc_XGEI0Ip9GA__.3600.1271649600-12345,2.aBdC...
\
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/exchange_sessions
The response from the request is a
JSON array of OAuth access tokens in
the same order as the sessions given:
[ {
"access_token": "...",
"expires": 1271649600, }, ... ]
However you don't need this method as its a bit more complex. For your use case i would suggest using a central point of authorization.
So you would specify your ONE domain as a redirect url. This domain is than SHARED between your websites. there you can obtain the fully valid access token and seamlessly redirect the user back to your specific project website and pass along the access token.
This way you can use the traditional easy authentication flow that is probably also more future proof.
The fact remains. Once the access token is generated you can perform any action from any domain, there is no difference as ther is literally no "domain" where the request is coming from (see above).
apart from that, if you want some nice javascript features to work - like the comments box or like button, you need to setup up open graph tags correctly.
if you have some implementation problems or as you said "domain errors" please describe them more clearly, include the steps you made and if possible an error message.