CVE-2020-26251: CORS configuration is possibly vulnerable

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.7 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-12-18 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-346

Description

Open Zaak is a modern, open-source data- and services-layer to enable zaakgericht werken, a Dutch approach to case management. In Open Zaak before version 1.3.3 the Cross-Origin-Resource-Sharing policy in Open Zaak is currently wide open - every client is allowed. This allows evil.com to run scripts that perform AJAX calls to known Open Zaak installations, and the browser will not block these. This was intended to only apply to development machines running on localhost/127.0.0.1. Open Zaak 1.3.3 disables CORS by default, while it can be opted-in through environment variables. The vulnerability does not actually seem exploitable because: a) The session cookie has a `Same-Site: Lax` policy which prevents it from being sent along in Cross-Origin requests. b) All pages that give access to (production) data are login-protected c) `Access-Control-Allow-Credentials` is set to `false` d) CSRF checks probably block the remote origin, since they're not explicitly added to the trusted allowlist.

Affected products

open-zaak: before 1.3.3 — fixed in 1.3.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: open-zaak 1.3.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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