API Discovery
In cybersecurity, API discovery refers to identifying an organization's Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), their characteristics, and their potential security risks. APIs are fundamental to how modern software applications communicate and exchange data. Therefore, finding and understanding them is critical for maintaining a strong security posture.
Here's a breakdown of key aspects:
Identifying APIs: This involves locating all APIs an organization develops, uses, or exposes. This includes internal APIs (used for communication between internal systems) and external APIs (exposed to partners or the public).
Mapping API Endpoints: APIs consist of endpoints, which are specific URLs that receive requests and send responses. API discovery maps these endpoints to understand the API's structure.
Understanding API Functionality: This means determining what each API does, what data it accesses, and what actions it performs. This is crucial for assessing potential risks.
Analyzing Authentication and Authorization Mechanisms: APIs use various methods to verify identity and grant access. Discovery includes analyzing these mechanisms to check for weaknesses.
Detecting API Changes: APIs evolve frequently. Discovery should be an ongoing process to detect new APIs, changes to existing APIs, and deprecated APIs.
Assessing Security Posture: API discovery aims to evaluate APIs' security. This includes identifying vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and potential attack vectors.
Why is API Discovery Important for Cybersecurity?
Shadow APIs: Organizations often have "shadow APIs" that are undocumented, unknown, or forgotten. These APIs are a significant security risk because they are not subject to security controls. API discovery helps find these shadow APIs.
Attack Surface Reduction: By identifying all APIs, organizations can better understand their attack surface and take steps to secure or remove unnecessary APIs.
Vulnerability Management: API discovery helps security teams assess APIs for known vulnerabilities and prioritize remediation efforts.
Data Protection: APIs often handle sensitive data. Discovery helps ensure that APIs are adequately secured to prevent unauthorized access and data breaches.
Compliance: Many regulations require organizations to secure their data and systems. API discovery is a key step in achieving compliance.
Let's explore how ThreatNG aids in API discovery and the enhancement of API security based on the provided document:
ThreatNG offers several features that significantly contribute to effective API discovery and improved API security posture:
ThreatNG's core capability of performing external, unauthenticated discovery is highly relevant for API discovery. It allows security professionals to identify APIs exposed to the outside world, even if they lack specific knowledge.
This is crucial for finding "shadow APIs" or undocumented APIs that can present significant security risks.
Example: ThreatNG can discover publicly accessible APIs associated with a web application, revealing API endpoints and their existence without requiring internal credentials.
ThreatNG's external assessment capabilities provide valuable insights into the security posture of discovered APIs:
Identifying API Endpoints: ThreatNG's subdomain intelligence and content identification features help identify API endpoints. The document mentions that ThreatNG can identify APIs as part of its content identification.
Example: ThreatNG can analyze subdomains and identify URLs that function as API endpoints, providing a map of an organization's API surface.
Analyzing API Security Configuration: ThreatNG assesses various security-related parameters relevant to API security. For instance, it analyzes header information, which can reveal security configurations or potential vulnerabilities in API implementations.
Example: ThreatNG can detect missing security headers in API responses, indicating potential security weaknesses.
Discovering Code Secrets: ThreatNG's ability to discover code repositories and exposed secrets is critical because API keys, tokens, and other credentials are often found in code.
Example: ThreatNG can find API keys exposed in public code repositories, which could allow unauthorized access to APIs.
3. Reporting
ThreatNG's reporting capabilities can be used to document discovered APIs and their security posture.
Example: ThreatNG can generate reports that include a list of discovered APIs, their endpoints, and any identified security issues.
ThreatNG's continuous monitoring is essential for API security because APIs change frequently. New APIs are added, existing APIs are updated, and old APIs are deprecated. Continuous monitoring helps organizations keep track of these changes and maintain a current inventory of their APIs.
Example: ThreatNG can continuously scan an organization's external attack surface and detect newly exposed APIs or changes to existing API endpoints.
ThreatNG's investigation modules provide detailed information that is valuable for in-depth API security analysis:
Domain Intelligence: This module provides information about an organization's domains and subdomains, which are often used to host APIs.
Example: ThreatNG’s Domain Intelligence can reveal subdomains that host APIs, providing valuable context for API discovery.
Subdomain Intelligence: As mentioned before, subdomain intelligence helps identify API endpoints and understand API structures.
Example: ThreatNG can analyze HTTP responses and server headers to identify potential API endpoints and the technologies they use.
Code Repository Exposure: The code repository exposure module helps identify API keys, credentials, and other sensitive information that might be present in code, which is crucial for API security.
Example: ThreatNG can find exposed API keys in public code repositories, enabling security teams to take action to revoke those keys and prevent unauthorized access.
ThreatNG's intelligence repositories, which include data on known vulnerabilities and compromised credentials, can be used to assess the risk associated with discovered APIs.
Example: ThreatNG's data on compromised credentials can help identify APIs that might be vulnerable to unauthorized access due to leaked credentials.
7. Working with Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's API discovery and assessment capabilities can be integrated with other security tools to enhance API security:
API Security Testing Tools: ThreatNG can provide a list of discovered APIs and their endpoints to API security testing tools, which can perform more in-depth security testing.
Example: ThreatNG can provide an inventory of APIs to an API testing tool, which can then automatically test those APIs for vulnerabilities.
API Gateways: ThreatNG's findings on API security misconfigurations can be used to improve the configuration of API gateways.
Example: If ThreatNG detects that an API lacks proper authentication, it can use this information to configure an API gateway to enforce authentication.
SIEM Systems: ThreatNG's API discovery and security assessment data can be fed into SIEM systems to correlate with other security events and provide a more comprehensive view of API security.
Example: A SIEM system can use ThreatNG's data on API access and correlate it with other network activity to detect suspicious API usage.
ThreatNG significantly enhances API discovery and security by providing external discovery, in-depth security assessments, continuous monitoring, and valuable intelligence. Its ability to integrate with complementary solutions further strengthens API security posture and enables proactive risk management.
