CORS for Flask

medium4 checks

CORS decides which origins may read your API responses. A wildcard turns an authenticated API into a public one.

What Flask must have

  • Access-Control-Allow-Origin limited to known origins
  • No wildcard combined with credentials
  • No reflection of arbitrary Origin headers
  • Preflight responses only allow the methods actually used

How to fix it

  1. 1Replace wildcards with an explicit allowlist
  2. 2Validate Origin before echoing it and reject unknown origins early

Flask context

Minimal Python web framework used for APIs and small services.

The Werkzeug debugger allows code execution if exposed — never run it on a public interface.