API security is often overlooked in favor of maximizing functionality across applications. However, failure to protect your API and all its endpoints can have disastrous consequences for brands and developers alike.
This is everything you need to know about API security solutions and the most common vulnerabilities developers should be aware of within their applications.
The answer is simple—APIs are vulnerable by nature and give hackers a potential route to intercept your data and commit a security breach while it is in transit. By gaining access to your API, an enterprising hacker could also gain access to your application and the user data it stores.
As a result, you could have a serious security breach on your hands if you don’t constantly monitor and protect your API and the data it transfers. In turn, you could pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements, fines, and cleanup fees after your application is compromised.
You may think it can’t happen to you, but countless other applications use APIs to communicate with other apps. However, as these other applications have learned the hard way, API-based security breaches can be extremely costly, and your data is never more vulnerable than in transit.
Web APIs are inherently vulnerable, which is why a sophisticated API security program is necessary. These are some of the most common API security threats that can compromise your entire system and potentially harm your organization and bottom line.
One notable vulnerability of APIs is that they tend to expose endpoints that handle object identifiers. Each of these endpoints is another potential vector for an API breach.
This is part of why authorization checks, including multi-factor authentication (MFA), should be required for any operation that uses your data sources and endpoints.
Some developers skip authentication measures, especially for APIs intended only for internal or private use. However, skipping these measures effectively invites attackers to exploit these flaws by posing as innocent users or compromising your authentication tokens from within.
This compromises the system’s ability to identify who is using it, which in turn undermines your API’s overall security.
This vulnerability is technically two security weaknesses in one. It combines excessive data exposure and mass assignment. These issues stem from improper authorization validation at the object property level. In turn, it allows attackers to manipulate the data within for their nefarious purposes and potentially compromise identifying data.
By nature, API calls use resources such as your network’s bandwidth, CPU, memory, and storage, and require validation via email or SMS codes. This ultimately culminates in a massive load of resource consumption.
While this may not seem like an issue on its own, it can make it harder to spot a possible denial-of-service attack in progress. Minimizing API resource use wherever possible improves your security posture, enabling you to respond more effectively to such attacks.
APIs that offer unrestricted access to sensitive business flows are more likely to expose user data, especially if they don’t account for how this functionality could compromise it. While automation is a convenient feature, relying too heavily on automated business flows, such as purchasing event tickets, can be costly.
This risk doesn’t necessarily stem from bugs in the implementation process, either—it could result from your developers taking shortcuts to make the application work more seamlessly.
SSRF occurs when an API fetches remote resources without validating user input. When an attacker uses it, they can force the application to send a specialized request to an unexpected destination.
Don’t think your system is safe from these attacks because you have a firewall or VPN, either. Attackers can still create requests to unexpected, unsecured destinations disguised as legitimate ones. This is why implementing proper validation measures is essential.
Compared to traditional, self-contained website applications, APIs tend to expose multiple endpoints. While proper documentation is invaluable for keeping your API and app safe, it’s also important to avoid using deprecated versions of your API and to protect exposed endpoints that may be subject to unauthorized debugging.
As with open-source code, developers tend to trust the data they receive from third-party APIs more than they trust user input. While this might seem like it’ll result in cleaner code overall, it often means these developers end up relying upon weaker security standards that leave their API at risk.
Attackers often use third-party integrations in supply chain attacks because they are softer targets than the API itself. That’s why taking security measures with your third-party API integrations is as essential as you would with any other part of your stack.
Protecting your API requires a multifaceted approach, especially if it connects multiple programs. We recommend following these API security best practices as a baseline to keep every connected application safe.
This is one of the most basic steps to protect your API, but it’s also one of the most important. Since user accounts are among the most common entry points attackers use to gain access to your application, it’s important to implement role-based access control (RBAC) and authentication measures.
Encouraging or requiring users to have MFA on their accounts, or using it as a checkpoint when they access the API, can add another layer of security to your entire system and keep your users safe.
In keeping with DevSecOps best practices, you should include end-to-end data encryption whenever possible. Encrypting data in transit—when it’s most vulnerable—protects it from being intercepted by attackers in a man-in-the-middle attack.
Your API should protect the data it transmits just as much as your application itself. Implementing this form of verification ensures that every piece of data is accurate and correctly formatted, preventing malicious code from infiltrating your API or its endpoints. It also makes it more challenging for attackers to break into your application with invalid data.
As mentioned, APIs consume far more data than your application’s standard operations. In addition to using only the most essential scripts and data your API needs, you can also reduce opportunities for a denial-of-service attack by limiting the number of API calls your systems make to each other.
This limits your data consumption, making it easier to detect a denial-of-service attack in progress. It also reduces the opportunities an attacker has to intercept your data while it’s in transit.
Logging every type of API activity creates a paper trail. This allows you to more easily monitor the types of calls your API makes and track suspicious activity so you can respond measuredly.
Activity logging and monitoring also allow you to continuously update your API’s security posture. This allows you to take a more proactive approach to security for both your API and your application as a whole.
Implementing versioning makes it easier to transition between different API updates without potentially compromising your data. This also includes having your team implement a timeline for retiring deprecated versions and maintaining compatibility with every application your API touches.
Sharing only the most relevant information through your API during transactions or calls is essential to protecting both your application and the one with which it communicates. This step reduces the amount of sensitive data that an attacker could expose and the size of your attack vector.
API gateways serve as a central point for your API and every application it’s connected to. Using them makes it easier to implement authorization policies and control access to API resources, so only designated users can access their endpoints.
Most top API gateways enable key management, encryption protocols, rate limiting, and authorization tools. By design, they also typically offer logging and monitoring capabilities, so your team always knows the latest activity and can receive real-time notifications if the system detects unusual situations.
Code obfuscation tools can make it more challenging for attackers to understand the code at both ends of your API. If an attacker gains access to your application through the API, obfuscating your code makes it more challenging for them to navigate your application’s code and get access to the most sensitive data in the application.
However, the correct code obfuscation tools emulate the Swiss cheese model by layering multiple protections that can confuse even the most experienced hacker and render their decompilation tools useless.
PreEmptive’s desktop and mobile application protection programs implement multiple layers of code obfuscation and encryption. This protects your API from a range of threats, from unauthorized debugging attempts to reverse-engineering attacks. It also protects your user data and your brand from becoming collateral damage.
Learn how PreEmptive’s suite of code obfuscation tools can protect every part of your application, including your API. Request a free trial today to see how PreEmptive can protect your desktop and mobile apps.