What Are API Attacks And How Can We Prevent Them?

In today's digital world, APIs are almost everywhere. They're needed by web apps, mobile apps, cloud-based consumer services, and whatnot. 

Their importance in business operations, responsiveness, and success in the market has gained them considerable importance over the past few years. While APIs are celebrated for their matchless functionality,  it's crucial to acknowledge and discuss the emerging challenge they face, API attacks.

The problem lies in the fact that APIs are attractive prey for hackers, mainly because of their popularity and fame.

What is an API Attack?

APIs can take various shapes, but the most common are automated threats like bot attacks, abuse, or access violations. Loss of sensitive information, interruption of services, and massive data losses are all potential results of these types of attacks. 

Any harmful or attempted negative use of an Application Programming Interface (API) is an API attack. API attacks occur in various forms, such as:

• Exploiting technical vulnerabilities in API implementations.
• Using stolen credentials and other methods of account takeover to pose as an authorized user.
• Committing business logic abuse, which permits the unlawful manipulation of APIs in unexpected and unforeseen ways.

Most companies are using one or any form of API, and because of the increase in malicious hacking technologies and methods, API security has become a concern. In this article, I'll discuss different API attacks and how to prevent these attacks in detail.

Unfortunately, as much as there is a risk of any company likely to get unprecedented attacks, most are not aware of the possibility at all. This is mostly due to the unfamiliarity with API security, and how a poorly implemented/developed API can cause damage to a business. More importantly, companies are not fully aware of how to prevent such an attack, and they lose critical user/client information. In light of such a scenario, let us discuss these attacks and how we can prevent them.

If you want to know about how API cyber security can help you in your business, This blog section will help you to learn everything about cybersecurity.

Potential Types Of API Attacks

APIs often come with document information about their structure and methods of implementation. Hackers can use this information to launch their cyber-attacks. There are other API security vulnerabilities like poor authentication, no encryption, and other flaws that can give rise to these attacks. Let’s take a look at some methods:

• The DDoS Attacks

This is probably the most common attack, something that even movies and TV shows talk about often. A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS, or D-doss) attack is one in which multiple systems flood the bandwidth of the target system. A DDoS attack on a web API attempts to overwhelm its memory by crowding it with several thousand connections at the same time. Hackers can also do this by sending a large and hefty amount of information in each request.

Here we can take the example of the Federal Communications Commission’s Office (FCC) in the USA, which suffered a cyberattack in 2017. The hacker used commercial cloud services to issue a massive amount of API requests to their commenting system. This not only overflowed the human commenters but also consumed all available resources, ultimately causing the website to crash.

• Man in the Middle (MITM)

An MITM attack is exactly what it means; an attacker discreetly relays, alters, and intercepts communications, messages, and requests between two parties to obtain sensitive information. A hacker can act as a man in the middle between a session token issuing API to an HTTP header and a user. If the hacker can intercept that session token, it would grant him access to the user’s account, which can lead to (possibly) a tonne of sensitive and personal information.

• API Injection Attack

This kind of attack happens on an application running on poorly developed code. The hacker injects malicious code into software, like SQLi (SQL injection) and XSS (cross-site scripting) to gain access to your software.

These attacks are not limited to the three discussed, there are more, and hackers can even develop more powerful attacks in the future as well. Session replays, spoofing, reverse engineering, and many forms of API attacks can launch on companies and software. So, what do they need to do?

• Exploitation of Technical Vulnerabilities

The exploitation of technical vulnerabilities is one of the most frequent forms of these attacks. In this kind of exploitation, attackers directly target the weaknesses in the API integration and try to get unauthorized access while disrupting the major services. 

These vulnerabilities come as a result of multiple factors such as weak security links, misconfigurations, design incompetence, or maybe in the deployment of the API. Attackers then take advantage of these vulnerabilities and perform activities like injection attacks, authentication hijacking, and abuse of business logic. All these harmful activities lead to some critical consequences such as data breaches, unauthorized access, and even system crashes. 

• Broken Access Control

This kind of API attack usually takes place when the access control policy of an application fails. Consequently, it lets people act outside of the granted permissions. This gives birth to unauthorized access, leak of sensitive data, changes in useful information, or even destruction of the whole system. 

The result of a faulty access control scheme can be quite severe, potentially damaging service disruption, causing data breaches, and leading to unauthorized manipulation of content. Implementation of robust security measures is the best way out of these kinds of API attacks. 

Best Security Measures To Secure Your APIs

Examine the API security checklist and put best practices in place to create robust and protected APIs. Here are the API security best practices that you need to follow:

• Use Push Notifications

Companies can develop a notification system in which the receiving system can forward notification alerts to the user’s phone. Users can set up this notification system when they get on board for the first time. MBaaS platforms can take care of this need and can integrate with the API policies that the company is looking for. However, during this make sure that the method to change the mobile number itself is secure from all ends. This may not entirely prevent an attack, but it can alert the user, giving more possibility to fight off the hack.

• Apply Two-Factor Authentication

Another method is to enable Two Factor Authentication (2FA) where a user has to enter an additional passcode other than the password itself. It can be easily implemented by using an API gateway platform. This additional password is sent to the user, in different methods when the login attempts happen from a distant location or another computer. For example, Facebook uses its built-in OTP (one-time passwords) which is generated for a few moments before a new one comes.

Some banks use 2FA using an SMS push notification, sending a time-sensitive PIN to users’ mobile phones upon account access. This might be the safest form of authentication available where a user must have access to the registered mobile number to enter the account.

• Encrypt Your Data

Another fix is to encrypt all traffic in transit. While the hacker can still capture data, it is as meaningful as nothing unless they have access to its decryption methods. Always use a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to ensure the encryption link between a server and a browser.

There is a growing market that offers API security, which is largely due to the risk involved in an API-based attack. According to an estimation, 69% of organizations are sharing their APIs with partners and customers. In the end, Companies like InvoZone offer reliable cybersecurity solutions to secure your data and APIs. Generally, applications developed by experienced professionals are more secure and the security systems involved further reduce their vulnerability.

• Security Training

Regular API in cybersecurity training is essential for developers to keep pace with the latest security threats and understand the best security practices. Moreover, companies have the opportunity to conduct frequent security training sessions for developers and other stakeholders, enhancing awareness of optimal API security practices and potential threats. 

By staying informed about the dynamic landscape of API security and consistently adjusting security measures, organizations can dramatically reduce the risks associated with their APIs, thereby ensuring their safety and maintaining their integrity. 

• Error Handling

A thorough error handling is crucial for the security and user experience of API. Error handing at its crux involves the way in which API responds to unexpected requests and wrong data types. Also, it reacts to authentication errors, server failures, and missing parameters. 

To handle these kinds of errors effectively, APIs should follow some of the best practices such as providing specific HTTP status codes, reducing information disclosure, and creating a consistent response format. APIs also need to log thorough error information to monitor and analyze error information timely. 

Conclusion

API attacks contain various hostile activities that are meant to exploit or misuse APIs. A few of the major attacks are DDoS attacks, a man in the middle, API injection attacks, exploitation of technical vulnerabilities, and broken access control. In order to surf safe from these attacks, organizations should execute a multilayered security system for example powerful authentication mechanism, strong encryption of data, input validation, and regular security assessments.  

It is crucial to implement rate limiting, apply two-factor authentication, and ensure proper SSL encryption to defend against potential API attacks. These security measures play a crucial role in securing sensitive data and preventing unauthorized access. Keeping notice of the evolving nature of API attacks is critical, as new methods and vulnerabilities may emerge with advancements in IT.