FastAPI Backend Development Bootcamp · Leçon

CORS, CSP et politiques d’en-têtes sécurisés

Verrouillez l’accès inter-origines et injectez des en-têtes de sécurité renforcés sans interrompre les clients légitimes.

CORS, CSP et politiques d’en-têtes sécurisés est une leçon FastAPI Backend Development Bootcamp gratuite sur CoddyKit. Ceci est la leçon 4 sur 4. Tu peux lire la leçon complète ci-dessous gratuitement — puis la pratiquer en direct dans le navigateur avec un éditeur de code intégré et un tuteur IA 24/7. Elle fait partie du parcours d'apprentissage FastAPI Backend Development Bootcamp, et ta progression se synchronise sur le web et l'application CoddyKit. Le cours FastAPI Backend Development Bootcamp comprend 4 leçons au total.

Certaines parties de cette leçon n'ont pas encore été traduites et s'affichent en anglais.

Why Headers Are Your Outer Perimeter

Before a request ever reaches your business logic, the browser and your server negotiate trust through HTTP headers. Two families dominate API hardening:

CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) decides which browser origins may read your responses.
Security response headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, etc.) tell the browser how to constrain the page it renders.

The goal of this lesson is to lock down cross-origin access and inject hardened headers without breaking legitimate clients. Misconfigure them and you either leak data to any website or block your own frontend.

The CORS Mental Model

CORS is enforced by the browser, not your server. Your API simply emits Access-Control-* headers; the browser decides whether to expose the response to JavaScript.

A simple request (GET/POST with safe headers) is sent immediately; the browser checks Access-Control-Allow-Origin on the response.
A preflight OPTIONS request is sent first for non-simple methods (PUT, DELETE) or custom headers like Authorization.

Critically: CORS does not protect server-to-server calls, curl, or mobile apps. It is purely a browser same-origin relaxation mechanism.

Configuring CORSMiddleware

FastAPI ships Starlette's CORSMiddleware. The cardinal rule: never combine allow_origins=["*"] with allow_credentials=True — the browser rejects that pairing, and it would be a data-leak anyway.

Pin an explicit allow-list of origins instead of a wildcard.

from fastapi import FastAPI
from fastapi.middleware.cors import CORSMiddleware

app = FastAPI()

app.add_middleware(
    CORSMiddleware,
    allow_origins=[
        "https://app.example.com",
        "https://admin.example.com",
    ],
    allow_credentials=True,
    allow_methods=["GET", "POST", "PUT", "DELETE"],
    allow_headers=["Authorization", "Content-Type"],
    max_age=600,
)

Wildcards, Credentials and Regex

When you must accept many subdomains, do not fall back to "*". Use allow_origin_regex so the browser still gets back the exact origin it sent, which is required for credentialed requests.

allow_methods=["*"] and allow_headers=["*"] are tolerable, but only when allow_credentials=False.
With credentials on, every value must be explicit or regex-matched.

from fastapi import FastAPI
from fastapi.middleware.cors import CORSMiddleware

app = FastAPI()

app.add_middleware(
    CORSMiddleware,
    allow_origin_regex=r"https://([a-z0-9-]+)\.example\.com",
    allow_credentials=True,
    allow_methods=["*"],
    allow_headers=["Authorization", "Content-Type"],
    expose_headers=["X-Request-ID"],
)

Validating an Origin Allow-List in Pure Python

The logic CORS middleware runs is conceptually simple: reflect the request origin only if it passes validation. Here is a standalone validator you could unit-test, mirroring how a custom origin check behaves before any framework is involved.

import re

ALLOWED = {"https://app.example.com", "https://admin.example.com"}
SUBDOMAIN = re.compile(r"^https://[a-z0-9-]+\.example\.com$")


def resolve_allow_origin(origin: str) -> str | None:
    if origin in ALLOWED or SUBDOMAIN.match(origin):
        return origin  # echo exact origin back
    return None  # do not emit Access-Control-Allow-Origin


for test in [
    "https://app.example.com",
    "https://team-7.example.com",
    "https://evil.com",
    "http://app.example.com",
]:
    print(test, "->", resolve_allow_origin(test))

Hardening Headers with a Custom Middleware

CORS handles cross-origin reads; a separate middleware injects defensive headers on every response. The essentials:

Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) forces HTTPS.
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff stops MIME sniffing.
X-Frame-Options: DENY blocks clickjacking.
Referrer-Policy limits leaked URLs.

from starlette.middleware.base import BaseHTTPMiddleware

HEADERS = {
    "Strict-Transport-Security": "max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains; preload",
    "X-Content-Type-Options": "nosniff",
    "X-Frame-Options": "DENY",
    "Referrer-Policy": "strict-origin-when-cross-origin",
    "Permissions-Policy": "geolocation=(), microphone=(), camera=()",
}


class SecurityHeadersMiddleware(BaseHTTPMiddleware):
    async def dispatch(self, request, call_next):
        response = await call_next(request)
        for key, value in HEADERS.items():
            response.headers.setdefault(key, value)
        return response


app.add_middleware(SecurityHeadersMiddleware)

Content-Security-Policy Fundamentals

CSP is the most powerful header for stopping XSS. It tells the browser which sources are allowed for scripts, styles, images, and connections. For an API serving JSON, a very tight default works because no inline content is rendered.

default-src 'none' denies everything unless overridden.
frame-ancestors 'none' is the modern replacement for X-Frame-Options.
For HTML pages, prefer a nonce over 'unsafe-inline'.

API_CSP = "; ".join([
    "default-src 'none'",
    "frame-ancestors 'none'",
    "base-uri 'none'",
    "form-action 'none'",
])

# Attach on the security middleware:
# response.headers.setdefault("Content-Security-Policy", API_CSP)
print(API_CSP)

Nonce-Based CSP for HTML Responses

When your FastAPI app renders HTML (docs, an admin page), inline scripts need a per-response nonce. Generate a fresh random nonce on each request, place it in both the CSP header and the <script nonce=...> tag.

Here is the standalone nonce-generation logic you would reuse inside a request handler.

import secrets


def new_nonce() -> str:
    return secrets.token_urlsafe(16)


def csp_with_nonce(nonce: str) -> str:
    return "; ".join([
        "default-src 'self'",
        f"script-src 'self' 'nonce-{nonce}'",
        "style-src 'self'",
        "object-src 'none'",
        "frame-ancestors 'none'",
    ])


n = new_nonce()
print("nonce:", n)
print(csp_with_nonce(n))

Report-Only Rollout Without Breaking Clients

Deploying a strict CSP blindly will break legitimate pages. The safe path is Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only: the browser does not enforce the policy but reports violations to an endpoint you control.

Ship report-only first, collect violations for days.
Tighten directives until reports go quiet, then switch to the enforcing header.

This is the single most important practice for not locking out real users.

from fastapi import FastAPI, Request, Response

app = FastAPI()

CSP = "default-src 'self'; report-uri /csp-report"


@app.middleware("http")
async def csp_report_only(request: Request, call_next):
    response: Response = await call_next(request)
    response.headers.setdefault("Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only", CSP)
    return response


@app.post("/csp-report")
async def collect(request: Request):
    payload = await request.json()
    # log payload["csp-report"] to your SIEM
    return Response(status_code=204)

Preflight, Caching and Performance

Each non-simple cross-origin call triggers a preflight OPTIONS round-trip. Tune it so you stay secure but fast:

Set max_age (emitted as Access-Control-Max-Age) so browsers cache the preflight result. Chromium caps it at 2 hours.
Keep allow_headers minimal — every custom header forces a preflight.
Avoid adding Authorization to simple GETs if you can pass it another safe way; otherwise expect a preflight.

Order matters in Starlette: middleware added last runs first (outermost). Add CORS so it wraps your security-header middleware, letting preflights short-circuit cleanly.

Putting It All Together

A hardened FastAPI bootstrap layers the pieces in the right order: security headers innermost, CORS outermost, with explicit origins and a tight CSP. This is the template you would deploy to production.

from fastapi import FastAPI
from fastapi.middleware.cors import CORSMiddleware
from starlette.middleware.base import BaseHTTPMiddleware

SEC = {
    "Strict-Transport-Security": "max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains; preload",
    "X-Content-Type-Options": "nosniff",
    "Referrer-Policy": "strict-origin-when-cross-origin",
    "Content-Security-Policy": "default-src 'none'; frame-ancestors 'none'",
}


class SecHeaders(BaseHTTPMiddleware):
    async def dispatch(self, request, call_next):
        resp = await call_next(request)
        for k, v in SEC.items():
            resp.headers.setdefault(k, v)
        return resp


app = FastAPI()
app.add_middleware(SecHeaders)            # added first -> runs inner
app.add_middleware(                        # added last  -> runs outer
    CORSMiddleware,
    allow_origins=["https://app.example.com"],
    allow_credentials=True,
    allow_methods=["GET", "POST", "PUT", "DELETE"],
    allow_headers=["Authorization", "Content-Type"],
    max_age=600,
)

Quick Check: Credentialed CORS

Your React frontend at https://app.example.com sends authenticated requests with cookies, so it needs allow_credentials=True. What is the correct origin configuration?

Recap and Takeaways

You hardened the request perimeter without locking out real clients:

CORS is browser-enforced: use an explicit allow-list or allow_origin_regex, and never pair "*" with allow_credentials=True.
Security headers (HSTS, nosniff, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy) belong on every response via a small middleware.
CSP is your strongest anti-XSS control: default-src 'none' for JSON APIs, nonce-based policies for HTML.
Roll out CSP with Report-Only first, watch violations, then enforce.
Tune max_age and minimal allow_headers to keep preflights cheap, and remember middleware order: added last runs outermost.

Secure defaults plus a measured rollout is how you ship hardening that production traffic survives.

Questions Fréquemment Posées

La leçon « CORS, CSP et politiques d’en-têtes sécurisés » est-elle gratuite ?

Oui — le texte complet de « CORS, CSP et politiques d’en-têtes sécurisés » est gratuit à lire ici sur le web. Pour la pratiquer de manière interactive (un éditeur de code intégré et un tuteur IA 24/7) et déverrouiller le reste du cours FastAPI Backend Development Bootcamp, passe à CoddyKit PRO. Le cours FastAPI Backend Development Bootcamp comprend 4 leçons au total.

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Verrouillez l’accès inter-origines et injectez des en-têtes de sécurité renforcés sans interrompre les clients légitimes. Tu pratiques FastAPI Backend Development Bootcamp avec du code pratique que tu exécutes directement dans le navigateur, et un tuteur IA 24/7 répond à tes questions au fur et à mesure que tu avances dans la leçon.

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Toutes les leçons de ce cours

Réduction des dix principaux risques de sécurité des API selon OWASP
Limitation du débit et protection contre les abus de robots
Gestion des secrets et rotation des clés
CORS, CSP et politiques d’en-têtes sécurisés

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