api-security▌

Implement API schema validation using OpenAPI specifications and JSON Schema to enforce input/output contracts and prevent injection, data exposure, and mass assignment attacks.

Discover and exploit mass assignment vulnerabilities in REST APIs to escalate privileges, modify restricted fields, and bypass authorization controls by injecting unexpected parameters in API requests.

Tests API rate limiting implementations for bypass vulnerabilities by manipulating request headers, IP addresses, HTTP methods, API versions, and encoding schemes to circumvent request throttling controls. The tester identifies rate limit headers, determines enforcement mechanisms, and attempts bypasses including X-Forwarded-For spoofing, parameter pollution, case variation, and endpoint path manipulation. Maps to OWASP API4:2023 Unrestricted Resource Consumption. Activates for requests involving rate limit bypass, API throttling evasion, brute force protection testing, or API abuse prevention assessment.

Implements API rate limiting and throttling controls using token bucket, sliding window, and fixed window algorithms to protect against brute force attacks, credential stuffing, resource exhaustion, and API abuse. The engineer configures per-user, per-IP, and per-endpoint rate limits using Redis-backed counters, API gateway plugins, or application middleware, and implements proper HTTP 429 responses with Retry-After headers. Activates for requests involving rate limiting implementation, API throttling setup, request quota management, or API abuse prevention.

Performs API inventory and discovery to identify all API endpoints in an organization's environment including documented, undocumented, shadow, zombie, and deprecated APIs. The tester uses passive traffic analysis, active scanning, DNS enumeration, JavaScript analysis, and cloud resource inventory to build a comprehensive API catalog. Maps to OWASP API9:2023 Improper Inventory Management. Activates for requests involving API discovery, shadow API detection, API inventory audit, or attack surface mapping.

Performs GraphQL introspection attacks to extract the full API schema including types, queries, mutations, subscriptions, and field definitions from GraphQL endpoints. The tester uses introspection queries to map the attack surface, identifies sensitive fields and mutations, tests for query depth and complexity limits, and exploits GraphQL-specific vulnerabilities including batching attacks, alias-based brute force, and nested query DoS. Activates for requests involving GraphQL security testing, introspection attack, GraphQL enumeration, or GraphQL API penetration testing.

Tests APIs for Broken Function Level Authorization (BFLA) vulnerabilities where regular users can invoke administrative functions or access privileged API endpoints by directly calling them. The tester identifies admin and privileged endpoints, then attempts to access them with regular user credentials by manipulating HTTP methods, URL paths, and request parameters. Maps to OWASP API5:2023 Broken Function Level Authorization. Activates for requests involving BFLA testing, admin endpoint bypass, function-level access control testing, or API privilege escalation.

Execute and test GraphQL depth limit attacks using deeply nested recursive queries to identify denial-of-service vulnerabilities in GraphQL APIs.

Implement API Security Posture Management to continuously discover, classify, and score APIs based on risk while enforcing security policies across the API lifecycle.