API Security
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow software applications to work with each other. Threat actors can abuse these vital communication channels between different software components to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data and system resources.
What is API Security?
API security includes a set of tools and best practices to protect APIs from attacks and abuse by threat actors. Vulnerabilities such as broken authentication and authorization processes, lack of rate limiting, and code injection flaws can leave APIs open to attacks.
Common API Security Threats
There are four primary types of API security threats.
Vulnerability exploits: Attackers target vulnerabilities in an API to exploit a weakness in the way it was constructed and gain access to the application as well as other systems and data. The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) maintains a list of the top 10 API security threats. However, there are also zero-day threats that target previously unknown vulnerabilities.
Authentication-based attacks: Attackers can abuse authentication methods in place to prevent unknown or illegitimate sources from accessing an API. For instance, they could steal credentials, an API key, or an authentication token.
Authorization errors: If authorized methods aren’t regularly checked to make sure they are operating properly, a threat actor can take advantage of errors to access data that shouldn’t be available to them.
DDoS attacks: Threat actors can launch a large volume of API requests to hamper service performance or bring systems down, with the intent of denying access to legitimate users.
Best Practices for Securing APIs
There are several practical ways to protect APIs from cyber threats, including:
- Authentication methods such as a user ID and password, an API key, or a token.
- Authorization using third-party identity providers such as OAuth2.
- Encryption to prevent sensitive communication from falling into the wrong hands.
- Monitoring, logging, and auditing API consumption to identify potentially suspicious behavior.
- Rate limiting and quotas to prevent different sources from flooding your APIs with too many requests.
- DDoS mitigation solutions that monitor the network for suspicious activity while keeping legitimate traffic flowing without the need for network appliances. Solutions that incorporate AI-assisted threat intelligence can stay ahead of emerging threats.
Get in Touch
It’s important to stay vigilant against the ever-present and evolving threat of DDoS attacks against APIs. Visit our threat intelligence research center for more information on DDoS defense in depth.
