I Reviewed 50 API Vulnerabilities — They All Shared This One Flaw
1 min read
Summary
Over the last year, security analyst Sawood Alam has examined 50 real-world API vulnerabilities and discovered that they all shared the same oversight.
Alam details how APIs across various industries and tech stacks have the same issue, stating that the common flaw is being overly reliant on transactional tokens for authentication.
This relates to what Alam calls the “API auth illusion”; where API endpoints presume a valid authentication token equals a valid user.
He states that since tokens can be easily stolen, this makes mocked authentication incredibly easy.
However, his message isn’t to deter people from using API authentication, but for developers to be more aware of implementing additional checks.