Course 2 - API Security Offence and Defense | Episode 4: Aggressive Attacks, Traditional Vulnerabilities and Exploitation of Staging APIs

In this lesson, you’ll learn about:Aggressive Attacks on APIsDenial of Service (DoS): Flooding servers to disrupt service; Layer 7 attacks mimic normal users.Brute Force: Guessing secrets like passwords, JWTs, tokens, or 2FA codes.Mitigation: Rate limiting, authentication for heavy processes, short expiration for secrets, complex codes, caching, load balancing, restricting direct IP access.Targeting Non-Production APIsDevelopment, staging, and deprecated APIs often lack proper security.Risks include exposed debugging info, weaker policies, and connection to production databases.Mitigation: Delete deprecated APIs, restrict access (passwords/IP), enforce production-level security policies, include in penetration testing scope.Traditional Web Vulnerabilities in APIsIDOR: Manipulate object IDs in URLs to access unauthorized data.XSS: Only exploitable if content type allows JavaScript execution.SQL Injection: Unexpected results indicate query manipulation.Remote Code Execution (RCE): 500 errors from unusual input may signal server or OS-level vulnerabilities.Key Takeaway:APIs must be protected from both API-specific threats and classic web vulnerabilities, with consistent security policies across all environments.You can listen and download our episodes for free on more than 10 different platforms:https://linktr.ee/cybercode_academy