- User tries to edit something sensitive, UI has profile data so disallows the action if the user is not an admin
- User pokes around the browser console to see what request would have been sent had the user been an admin and the UI allowed it
- User manually sends malicious admin request to API
- API fails to check whether admin request came from a user with admin rights and blindly executes the malicious action
I found this on a mapping site (now defunct) that let you printout sections of maps for a change. However, you could get small sample maps for free. And so by altering the width and height parameters in the page source ...
This wasn't mean't as a dig at frontend devs. After all the backend used the values as passed, and there should be some archtectural oversight to ensure this sort of sloppiness doesn't pass review. It's really a case of incompetent all round.
As dev I see a push to put more and more functionality into the client. It makes for a better user experience, but the downside is that security gets overlooked.