What can developers do?
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2025 6:34 am
“So it’s very easy for a scripted agent bot to mine information, which is what happened in the fitness company case,” says Care. “If we had a discovery system, we would have found these exposed endpoints ourselves, and we would have said, ‘Hey, look, this is what we need to do here. If you manipulate URLs, you can uncover shadow APIs.’”
Kare stresses that developers should not use Social Security numbers, phone numbers, or email addresses as customer identifiers. He says that a lack of authentication for logins could allow an attacker to scour an entire customer database. In one case he cites, a broken login was compounded by a lack of validation of user input, allowing an attacker to access credit histories and other sensitive financial information.
“We ran into our old friend BOPLA again – it turns out paraguay mobile database an API with very weak authentication can be queried for a credit score,” explains Kare. “And guess what, not only can you pull information about the victim and do a little identity theft, but you can also check how good a victim they are, how much credit can be obtained in their name.”
All of these can be easily fixed once discovered; but again, many companies don't discover API security flaws because they don't monitor them.
“Most retailers don’t find out they’ve been hacked, that their payment systems have been compromised, by their own free will. They’re told by their bank,” says Care. “When your security alerts come from outside, it’s not a pleasant experience, believe me.”
Kare stresses that developers should not use Social Security numbers, phone numbers, or email addresses as customer identifiers. He says that a lack of authentication for logins could allow an attacker to scour an entire customer database. In one case he cites, a broken login was compounded by a lack of validation of user input, allowing an attacker to access credit histories and other sensitive financial information.
“We ran into our old friend BOPLA again – it turns out paraguay mobile database an API with very weak authentication can be queried for a credit score,” explains Kare. “And guess what, not only can you pull information about the victim and do a little identity theft, but you can also check how good a victim they are, how much credit can be obtained in their name.”
All of these can be easily fixed once discovered; but again, many companies don't discover API security flaws because they don't monitor them.
“Most retailers don’t find out they’ve been hacked, that their payment systems have been compromised, by their own free will. They’re told by their bank,” says Care. “When your security alerts come from outside, it’s not a pleasant experience, believe me.”