Open Redirect Bugs: How Attackers Abuse Trusted Domains and How to Fix Them

An open redirect occurs when an endpoint forwards users to any URL supplied in a parameter, letting attackers borrow a site's domain trust. This can enable phishing links that pass domain-based checks, and token theft during OAuth or SSO flows. The article's author ran a local test server showing that naive checks fail against bypass payloads such as protocol-relative URLs and backslash tricks. The recommended fix is an allowlist of same-origin paths or exact hostnames, validated with a real URL parser and a safe default fallback. The author also suggests a strict Referrer-Policy for sensitive pages to prevent token leakage.
This is an AI-generated summary. ShortSingh links to the original source for the complete article.

Discussion (0)
Log in to join the discussion and vote.
Log in