An organization’s attack surface is similar to a bubble. Like a bubble’s surface expands as someone blows more air into it, an organization’s attack surface expands as it connects more applications and technologies. Increasingly, organizations use Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to connect Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. APIs are the channel through which applications communicate, enabling business agility and operational efficiency. However, they often transmit sensitive data, like personally identifiable information (PII) or credit card information.
By understanding what one’s API attack surface is and the role APIs play in risk mitigation, organizations can improve cybersecurity and compliance.
The API attack surface life cycle typically consists of the following:
- Monitoring: Scanning environments for external facing vulnerabilities that can lead to an attack, including APIs that share sensitive data between applications
- Asset discovery and inventory: Identifying digital assets across multiple environments to maintain an asset inventory
- Analysis: Evaluating and analyzing asset vulnerabilities that increase risk, like misconfigured APIs and web objects sharing too much endpoint information
- Prioritization: Focusing attention on high-risk assets
- Remediation: Applying security recommendations and tracking tools to assets containing vulnerabilities
The Relationship Between Attack Surface Management and APIs.
APIs allow applications to share information, with each new endpoint introducing potential vulnerabilities that threat actors may exploit. As organizations adopt and connect more SaaS applications, malicious actors increasingly target APIs because they often are not authenticated and, in some cases, completely unprotected, serving as streamlined gateways to sensitive data and critical systems.
Increasing the Attack Surface.
As API-driven transactions increase, managing them becomes more complex. While each API endpoint can introduce potential weaknesses, traditional security frameworks often focus more on perimeter defenses. Some example of APIs that increase an organization’s attack surface include:
- Zombie APIs: APIs not being actively used, maintained, updated, or monitored
- Shadow or Rogue APIs: APIs lacking the appropriate authorization or approval, making them an open but unmonitored access point
Various API Types.
APIs come in various types, including:
- Open/Public: Minimal restrictions so third-party developers can use them, often accessible with an API key or fully open
- Partner: Vendor-provided with specialized authentication requirements but not entirely private
- Private/Internal: Developed in-house to connect internal systems and not publicly accessible
- Hybrid/Composite: Combining multiple services or endpoints into a single API using developer API creation tools
Each type of API posts a different type of risk. For example, private APIs might have risks arising from developer errors related to authentication. However, partner APIs might have a known, published vulnerability that attackers can exploit across multiple customers.
Dynamic Technology.
APIs are continuously updated, often as part of the organization’s approach to application development. Modern development teams may automate code and application updates using continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) tools.
Problematically, development teams may not provide API documentation, meaning the organization lacks visibility into whether it has the most recently updated and most secure version of the API.
Best practices for reducing API vulnerabilities.
As organizations leverage APIs to enhance functionality and improve user experiences, they must adopt best practices to safeguard these interfaces from malicious attacks and exploitation.
Implement Secure Coding Practices.
By embedding security into the software development lifecycle, organizations can proactively mitigate vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers. When shifting API security left, organizations should consider:
- Scanning and testing against vulnerability frameworks, like the OWASP API Security Top 10
- Integrating API security tools with pre-production environments
- Testing against business logic abuse
Discover APIs.
Identifying and inventorying APIs is critical to securing them. Organizations should implement solutions that:
- Continuously discover external APIs and their hosting environments
- Provide visibility into runtime API inventory from the cloud environment
- Uncover external API endpoints for DNS-listed subdomains
- Categorize APIs by function
Analyze Risks and Vulnerabilities.
With visibility into internal and external APIs, organizations can implement continuous risk monitoring. Organizations should implement solutions that:
- Prioritize APIs based on risk
- Provide critical details, including usage by country, IP address, and organizations
- Offer machine-learning (ML) based analyses that include predefined and customizable data patterns
- Integrate with the organization’s existing API infrastructure, like API gateways, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), load balancers, and ingress controllers
Prioritize Remediation Activities.
Once an organization identifies and analyzes API vulnerability risks, it needs to implement the appropriate remediation strategy. However, with the expansive number of APIs that the organization has, prioritizing remediation activities can be difficult. Organizations should focus their activities on the following:
- Public-facing APIs that can expose sensitive data
- APIs covered by data protection regulations, like PCI DSS, GDPR, and HIPAA
- Internal APIs that can create data exposure risks based on the IP address or server involved
- Alerts that indicate compliance violations or security weaknesses
Engage in Regular Security Audits
Continuous auditing plays a vital role in identifying vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and exposures within an organization’s infrastructure. By regularly assessing security posture, businesses can effectively shrink their attack surface, thereby reducing the risk of potential breaches. Organizations should look for solutions that enable:
- Malicious bot activity detection
- Provide high-fidelity alerts
- Improve incident response times with visibility into automated attacks
Vercara: API Security Discovery
Vercara’s suite of API security solutions enables organizations to implement identification, monitoring, and risk mitigation across the API lifecycle. UltraAPI Discover enables organizations to understand their external API attack surface by providing an attacker’s view of the landscape, regardless of location. By continuously revealing new API endpoints, UltraAPI Discover ensures that security compliance teams remain up-to-date on API risks and vulnerabilities.
UltraAPI Comply delivers real-time runtime visibility, testing, and monitoring so that organizations and their development teams can discover and remediate errors rapidly. With visibility into internal and external APIs, including shadow, hidden, deprecated, and third-party developed APIs, organizations can continuously monitor risk and ensure conformance to mission-critical compliance standards.
For real-time Bot protection, organizations can leverage UltraAPI Bot Manager’s powerful analytics engine that uses a multidimensional machine learning technique. By analyzing all APIs and web application requests across the network, organizations improve their security posture while reducing policy administration efforts with consistent protection.
