Cross-Site Cookie Restrictions Cause 401 Errors on Deployed Web Apps
A developer discovered that users logging into a deployed frontend were immediately treated as unauthenticated despite valid credentials, triggering 401 Unauthorized errors on protected endpoints. The issue stemmed from cross-site cookie restrictions enforced by modern browsers when the frontend and backend are hosted on different domains. While localhost environments share the same hostname and allow cookie exchange by default, production deployments across separate domains require explicit cookie configuration. Specifically, the session cookie lacked the SameSite=None flag, which permits cross-site requests, and the Secure flag, which is mandatory alongside SameSite=None to ensure transmission only over HTTPS. Without these flags, browsers blocked the session cookie entirely, leaving the backend with no credentials to authenticate incoming requests.
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