Today, modern software applications are constantly being threatened — attackers are on the prowl and looking for blood. Why? The truth is that hacking is a very lucrative business. A single attack might net a cybercriminal an average of 10 thousand dollars. Some attacks have even netted these malcontents figures in the millions. Not only that, but since digital scams and cyber-crimes know no boundaries or borders, it’s extremely difficult to prosecute or pursue these individuals. Now, more than ever, it’s good to be bad. It’s smart, given that damning notion to keep up with the latest exploits and security vulnerabilities assailing your peers. To have eye trends. Today, one of the biggest concerns to most security teams is API vulnerabilities. Let’s take a look at what they are, and how they might affect you/
What is an API vulnerability?
An API vulnerability is a security issue in the code of an API – application programs used to interface computers and networks. API can be exploited by hackers to gain unauthorized access to the backend of a system. Some of these API vulnerabilities are inherent to the system, in other words, they are side-effects you take on if you want to launch an app. Others are exploitable security flaws or errors in the application programming interface and how it interacts with the system.
API vulnerabilities result in massive consequences. Not only costs associated with the attack itself and profit liabilities, but PR issues. You have an obligation, not only moral but in many cases regulated by law, concerning the way you protect private data and how your systems expose your clients to fraud.
API vulnerabilities can severely expose your company to data leaks that can be used for malicious purposes. This could lead to stolen data, identity theft, and credit card fraud. There are numerous different types of threats to your company, including phishing attacks, malicious programs, and viruses, data breaches. Phishing attacks are similar to scams in that they are designed to trick you into thinking you’re receiving an email from somebody or a reputable company. The email might ask for personal information like credit card information or login credentials.
Any of these vulnerabilities might land you in hot water. Hurt your stock price, necessitate downtime in which you’re not earning any revenues, create enormous branding issues and PR scandals, and even expose yourself to lawsuits and hefty governmental fines.
The most common API vulnerabilities.
As the value of API for our organizations and our clients’ increases, it’s important to understand some of the more common API vulnerabilities and attacks out there. This will allow your company to not only investigate if those vulnerabilities are a threat to them, but take actions to mitigate and address each insecurity.
Broken APIs without authentication and authorization mechanisms
API at their core enables access to objects, broken user authentication or broken level authorization may lead to catastrophic attacks. It’s important to secure keys, and implement object-level authorization checks.
Injections attacks
Injection vulnerabilities can be found in any coded language and they often show up when developers fail to properly validate input from an API call.
Injections happen when a malicious user inserts malicious code into a web form or query string, which is then processed by the application server and executed with root permissions. This allows an attacker to control what is executed on the server, including accessing sensitive data or executing commands on the server’s operating system, its OS.
They are the most common attack vectors and have been around for a long time —and will not go away soon.
Unencrypted data
Nowadays, many companies and organizations are collecting huge amounts of data from their users and customers. This information is often unencrypted and can be accessed by anyone with the right tools. This poses a major security risk because hackers can use this information for their mischief.
Any manner of unencrypted data is a major security risk. It is vulnerable to hackers who can use it to take control of your computer or steal your staff’s identity or your client’s ID.
Replay attacks
Replay attacks are a type of assault that can be used to intercept and retransmit data packets between two computers. This attack is usually done by recording the traffic from one computer, then replaying it on a different one.
In order to protect against replay attacks, you’ll need to make sure that every packet is authenticated before it is accepted.
Distributed Denial of Services
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources. It is common for attack and easy to coordinate. Your system only has enough buffer — it can only accept a certain amount of inquiries and “pokes” before it is strained beyond its limits. Hackers can set up millions of accounts and continually, in an automated manner, strike your system and overwhelm it.
Man-in-the-Middle attack
A man-in-the-middle attack is a kind of hack that happens when someone intercepts and tampers with data being transmitted between two parties.
The attacker will set up a fake network connection to the victim so that all messages sent between them are intercepted and modified.
How to find vulnerabilities in API?
By scanning, monitoring – constantly – your API you can get a jump on vulnerabilities. It’s important to build safeguards and simple tests that can help you scan your API. They will help you identify vulnerabilities, resolve them, and later rescan them in order to confirm a resolution. Today, there are multiple open source programs and automation tools that can help programmers and security teams better test and prepare their APIs.