6 Infamous API Security Breaches: How to Safeguard Your APIs
APIs are at the helm of any modern application. You book a cab, and Uber calls the Google Maps API. While paying via UPI, Razorpay queries an API. Also, while signing up on a website using social media, APIs fulfil your authentication.
With all this unprecedented glory comes the inception of something sinister: API security breaches.
API vulnerabilities are constantly on the rise. Since API development is quite flexible, there is only a little standardization. Consequently, it takes more work to enforce best practices – leading to elevated risks.
API insecurity accounts for up to 7% of cybersecurity incidents.
This article highlights six recent API security breaches and their impact. Keep reading to discover how you can secure your organization from API security attacks.
Unravelling Recent API Breaches and Subsequent Impact
Here are a few notable API security breaches that caused massive havoc to organizations worldwide:
PayPal
In late 2022, around 35,000 PayPal customers suffered a credential stuffing attack. The credential stuffing approach involves hackers attempting username & password combos obtained via data leaks on websites.
The hackers gained access to account holders’ names, postal addresses, and other personal information, including Social security numbers!
Complex passwords and multifactor authentication can assist, but organizations with poor API security continue to fall short, putting user data at peril.
T-Mobile
T-Mobile revealed a data breach after a threat hacker obtained personal information from 37 million existing postpaid and prepaid user accounts via one of its APIs.
The hacker accessed data through the exploited API on November 25, 2022. On January 5, 2023, T-Mobile identified suspicious behaviour and blocked the attacker’s access to the API the next day.
The impacted API revealed customers’ data, including email, billing address, T-Mobile A/C number and purchase information.
T-Mobile has been attacked eight times since 2018 – with each attack targeting different kinds of confidential customer data.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Attackers gained access through an undocumented AWS API. Interestingly, this approach enabled the hackers to perform attacks without leaving behind any traces on CloudTrail – AWS’ event logging service.
As APIs evolve, so are hackers, who continue to find ingenious ways to compromise API security.
Automobile Giants
API flaws across Mercedes, BMW and Toyota allowed attackers to access owners’ personal information.
Hackers gained access to private GitHub instances and even internal corporate chat channels. Personal information like the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) was also accessible.
The attackers exploited SSO flaws to gain high-level access to corporate employee applications.
Azure
A Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) attack occurred against Microsoft’s Azure services. Moreover, in two cases, the vulnerabilities didn’t prompt authentication, allowing an attacker to exploit the information without using an Azure account. Microsoft proactively confirmed that they had fixed the issues.
Even the Internet’s search engine king Google had certain API flaws. An SSRF simulation attack revealed vulnerabilities in GCP’s authorization token.
Google rewarded the bug-bounty hunters with $22,000 for unearthing six different bugs, including SSH, RCE and XSS.
The Need for API Security
Significant income loss is a severe consequence of API security breaches. Research suggests that 29% of organizations facing a data breach incur revenue loss. Moreover, 38% of these organizations suffered a 20% or more significant revenue loss.
Investing in API security is critical to protect your customers’ data. API security flaws can quickly spiral into data breaches and ruin your brand’s reputation. In the age of web-based interaction, APIs have become an essential target for hackers.
What if you had an AI-powered platform that makes API security a walk in the park?
Introducing AppSentinels: The Most Practical API Security Solution
As hackers employ innovative attaching techniques, the cyber security world struggles to keep pace.
APIs originate in unreliable locations, and API breaches are business logic vulnerabilities that provide blind spots for current security solutions. Cyber Security stakeholders require a platform to minimize blindspots and safeguard against API breaches.
Introducing AppSentinels which is an end-to-end API lifecycle security platform. Topped with AI and ML models, AppSentinels is your ally against the monstrous world of hackers.
AppSentinels is all about versatility. The tool supports all application architectures and environments, including monolithic applications, microservices, Kubes, and serverless applications; applications hosted on-premises, in the cloud, or any hybrid environment.
Here are 4 USPs of AppSentinels that can take your API security to the next level:
- AppSentinels 360 Continuous Discovery
Real-time continuous discovery of all your APIs as and when they are deployed or modified. Our platform also delivers details on input and output parameters, data-types, whether a parameter is mandatory, optional, or PII/sensitive.AppSentinels proactively detects APIs and attributes to paint a complete picture of your API environment.
The true elegance of AppSentinels lies in real real-time API lifecycle management. The API-catalogue feature auto-updates with your application. Consequently, you constantly have access to updated API inventory asset details.
From an API security perspective, AppSentinels assigns a risk score to each API. As a result, you can assess your application risk and proactively mitigate potential vulnerabilities.
- Proactive API Testing
AppSentinels features a proprietary Intelligent Stateful DAST to perform shift-left deep learning of application vulnerabilities.
The tool actively tests APIs in your CI/CD pipeline and detects application security issues like business logic exploits before any code enters production.
Unlike traditional tools, AppSentinels prioritizes issues that genuinely require your attention.
- AI-Powered Multi-Layered Defence Shield
Imagine you have the power to defend against known and unknown API attacks. Now, stop imagining because AppSentinels does precisely that!
Harnessing AI/ML models, AppSentinels monitors application usage and reports vulnerabilities.
The result is a highly strengthened and secure API environment for your organization.
By leveraging the Core Rule Set, AppSentinels prevents hackers from employing techniques such as SQL-Injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Command and File Injection, etc. - Rapid Incident Response & Remediation
AppSentinels correlates and maps events to the rightful individuals behind an attack using application and traffic fingerprinting.
AppSentinels acts as an additional line of defence for the SecOps team. The platform also has high accuracy. Harnessing AI correlation metrics, AppSentinels precisely distinguishes attackers from corporate users.
From a data integrity perspective, AppSentinels’ three-tier architecture maintains all vital client data on-premises and only processes meta-data for processing and analysis.
The bottom line is that API security breaches are on the rise. Tools like AppSentinels can help bolster your SecOps and tighten API standards to prevent avoidable cybersecurity mishaps.
What Next?
AppSentinels is the most complete API lifecycle management tool. If you’re keen to elevate the API security for your organization, sign up for a free trial.
If you need expert guidance, reach out to us, and our team of API security specialists will set up a free consultation.