The same-origin policy remains one of the most important security mechanisms of the web, protecting servers from malicious pages interacting with their APIs through cross-site requests. However, the subtle details of the policy can be overlooked, so our talk aims to show how limitations in the application of the same-origin policy can undermine security. We explain in depth how the same-origin policy works and how it can be bypassed to exploit cross-site vulnerabilities, including examples of Java, Flash, Silverlight, and Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) misconfigurations.
As the same-origin policy and cross-site request forgery (CSRF) are inherently connected, we will also show both simple and complex cross-site request forgery attacks and how CSRF functions within the context of the same-origin policy. This will include classic CSRF attacks that work within the confines of the same-origin policy and more complicated attacks that utilize server misconfigurations to bypass the same-origin restrictions altogether.