dotvitals

Any website is allowed to read this site's responses

HighConfirmedweb.cors.origin-reflected

What this check looks for

The server told a website we invented that it may read this page's contents. It will tell any website the same thing. Cookies are not attached, so what another site can read is what an anonymous visitor sees.

Why it matters

Two things are true at once. Anything on this endpoint that is not genuinely public is now readable by any page on the internet, from the visitor's own network — which reaches internal-only responses a scanner cannot. And the day anyone adds credentials to this policy, it becomes a critical account-data leak with no further change.

When the check passes, your report says: “Cross-origin reads are limited to origins you named”.

What it costs your score

When this check fails it removes 18 points from your Web security score, before the status, confidence and repeat multipliers are applied. Web security carries a weight of 8 in the overall score.

It shares the web-security.cors family ceiling of 35 points: however many findings that family produces, together they cannot remove more than that from Web security. One underlying problem showing up in several places is still one problem.

Severity
high
Default confidence
confirmed
Status when triggered
warn
Deduction
18 points
Family cap
web-security.cors · 35
Category
Web security
Module
Web cors
Fix owned by
user
In the ruleset since
2026.09

How the whole score is calculated

How to fix it

Replace the reflection with a fixed allow-list, or use a plain wildcard if the data really is public.

A reflection allows every site today and becomes an account-data leak the day credentials are added.

  1. Decide what this endpoint returns. If it is genuinely public — a public API, a font, a CDN asset — say so explicitly with Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * and no credentials, which is honest and cacheable.

  2. If it is not public, list the exact origins that need it and compare the request's Origin against that fixed set with an exact equality test.

  3. Return the matched origin on a match and no CORS headers otherwise; never echo the header value you were given.

  4. Add Vary: Origin to every response so a shared cache cannot mix the two answers up.

  5. If nothing cross-origin uses this endpoint, remove the CORS headers altogether — the default of no CORS is the correct configuration, not a gap.

How to confirm it worked

  • curl -sSI -H 'Origin: https://not-your-site.example' https://‹host›/ | grep -i '^access-control-allow-origin:' — expect no output

  • curl -sSI https://‹host›/ | grep -i '^vary:' — expect Origin to be listed

The configuration to publish
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://app.example.com   # only when the request Origin equals this exact value
Vary: Origin

A named slot like ‹domain› — and the braces left in the configuration below — is filled in with your own values when this rule appears on a report.

Remediation by platform

nginx
# http scope. The map is the allow-list: an origin that is not a key here gets "".
map $http_origin $cors_origin {
	default                     "";
	"https://app.example.com"   "https://app.example.com";
	"https://admin.example.com" "https://admin.example.com";
}

# Credentials are granted only when the origin matched.
map $cors_origin $cors_credentials {
	default "";
	~.      "true";
}

server {
	location /api/ {
		add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin      $cors_origin always;
		add_header Access-Control-Allow-Credentials $cors_credentials always;
		add_header Access-Control-Allow-Methods     "GET, POST, OPTIONS" always;
		add_header Access-Control-Allow-Headers     "Authorization, Content-Type" always;
		add_header Access-Control-Max-Age           "600" always;
		add_header Vary                             "Origin" always;

		if ($request_method = OPTIONS) {
			return 204;
		}
	}
}
Apache
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
	# The capture group is the allow-list: only these exact origins set the variable.
	SetEnvIf Origin "^(https://app\.example\.com)$"   CORS_ORIGIN=$1
	SetEnvIf Origin "^(https://admin\.example\.com)$" CORS_ORIGIN=$1

	Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Origin      "%{CORS_ORIGIN}e" env=CORS_ORIGIN
	Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Credentials "true"            env=CORS_ORIGIN
	Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Methods     "GET, POST, OPTIONS" env=CORS_ORIGIN
	Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Headers     "Authorization, Content-Type" env=CORS_ORIGIN
	Header always set Access-Control-Max-Age           "600"             env=CORS_ORIGIN

	# Unconditional: the response varies by Origin whether or not this one matched.
	Header always append Vary Origin
</IfModule>
Caddy
@allowed_origin header Origin https://app.example.com

header @allowed_origin {
	Access-Control-Allow-Origin "https://app.example.com"
	Access-Control-Allow-Credentials "true"
	Access-Control-Allow-Methods "GET, POST, OPTIONS"
	Access-Control-Allow-Headers "Authorization, Content-Type"
	Access-Control-Max-Age "600"
}

# Unconditional, so caches key on Origin even for the unmatched response.
header Vary Origin

@preflight method OPTIONS
respond @preflight 204
Express
const ALLOWED_ORIGINS = new Set([
  'https://app.example.com',
  'https://admin.example.com',
]);

app.use((req, res, next) => {
  // Set unconditionally: the answer depends on Origin even when it is refused.
  res.vary('Origin');

  const origin = req.headers.origin;
  if (origin !== undefined && ALLOWED_ORIGINS.has(origin)) {
    res.setHeader('Access-Control-Allow-Origin', origin);
    res.setHeader('Access-Control-Allow-Credentials', 'true');
    res.setHeader('Access-Control-Allow-Methods', 'GET, POST, OPTIONS');
    res.setHeader('Access-Control-Allow-Headers', 'Authorization, Content-Type');
    res.setHeader('Access-Control-Max-Age', '600');
  }
  if (req.method === 'OPTIONS') return res.sendStatus(204);
  next();
});
Cloudflare
Rules → Overview → Create rule → Response Header Transform Rule (path as at 2026-09), with an expression that tests the request Origin against a fixed list, e.g.
  http.request.headers["origin"][0] in {"https://app.example.com" "https://admin.example.com"}
and a matching rule that always sets Vary: Origin.
  • The map has to be at http scope — nginx has no allow-list construct inside location, and building one out of if there is the source of most broken nginx CORS configurations. nginx skips an add_header whose variable is empty, so an unmatched origin simply receives no CORS headers. always is required or the headers vanish on error responses and on the 204 preflight. Remember that any add_header inside a location discards every add_header inherited from the server block, so keep the whole set together.

  • Shown because the response identified Apache. SetEnvIf plus env= is the mechanism — Header set has no conditional form of its own, and anchoring the regex with ^…$ is what stops https://app.example.com.attacker.example matching. Put it in the virtual host: .htaccess runs too late for responses the server generates itself, including the preflight.

  • The header Origin <value> matcher compares the whole value, so it is an exact-match allow-list rather than a prefix test. Repeat the matcher and block for each additional origin.

  • The origin is written back only after the Set membership test, which is the difference between an allow-list and a reflection. Never build the set from a request value, an environment variable that is not reviewed, or a substring/endsWith test — https://app.example.com.attacker.example ends with nothing useful but starts with everything an attacker needs.

  • Treat this as a sketch of the approach rather than a copy-paste: the exact expression and the dynamic-value syntax differ between Cloudflare plans, and a static-value rule can only serve one origin. A Transform Rule also runs at Cloudflare's edge, so an origin that is reachable directly — by IP, or through a DNS record that is not proxied — still serves the policy measured here. Setting the allow-list at the origin covers both paths and is what we recommend.

Technical detail

We sent Origin: ‹probe origin› to ‹origin› and got back Access-Control-Allow-Origin: ‹allow origin›. No Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true was present. ‹detail›

The baseline request, sent with no Origin header, returned no Access-Control-Allow-Origin at all, and the preflight was echoed a second, different invented origin — so this is a reflection rather than an allow-list entry that happens to match.

What this does *not* mean: the browser will not attach the visitor's cookies, so a cross-origin reader sees the anonymous version of the response, not the logged-in one. What it does mean is worth stating plainly rather than dismissing. The reader is the visitor's browser, so the request comes from inside their network and carries their IP address — which reaches responses that vary by network position, by internal DNS, or by an IP allow-list. And a reflection is a policy written without an allow-list: the moment credentials are switched on, by a framework upgrade or by someone making a login flow work, this becomes web.cors.origin-reflected-with-credentials with no other change.

Detected server: ‹detected server›.

Standards and references

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