How to Perform API Penetration Testing Using Automated Scanners?

Quick Summary: APIs are vital for modern systems, but they are also potential weak spots for hackers. Automated pen testing helps businesses identify and resolve these weak spots by continuously testing their APIs. Get information on how you can pen test your APIs with this step-by-step API penetration testing guide and how it benefits your business.

In modern API-driven applications, the weakest link isn’t just the insecure code – it's also APIs. Organizations are increasingly relying on APIs to power their digital ecosystems. While they offer a bridge for data exchange between systems and applications, they are also potential attack points for hackers.

Exposures of critical functionalities, data overexposure, poor security, and other weaknesses make APIs highly susceptible to cyberattacks. Thus, security teams and business leaders must pay attention to API security to protect their digital systems and applications.

This is where API penetration testing scanners play a vital role – providing automated vulnerability detection and reporting. They simulate real-world attacks and test APIs for a wide range of common vulnerabilities.

In this blog, we will delve into the power of automated API pen testing scanners and how they help strengthen API security. You will understand how these specialized tools can help discover hidden security loopholes and boost security posture.

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What is Automated API Penetration Testing?

API pentesting or API penetration testing, is a cybersecurity practice that involves simulated real-world attacks to discover vulnerabilities. It helps evaluate APIs in hacker’s style to uncover security weaknesses precisely.

Penetration testing can be either manual or automated. While manual pentesting is performed by ethical hackers or security professionals acting like real hackers, automated pen testing is performed by AppSec software tools.

In essence, automated API penetration testing is a kind of pen testing in which there is no human involvement in the process. It is a quick and cost-effective way to test APIs for common security vulnerabilities.

Using automated scanners for API pentesting enables AppSec teams to detect vulnerabilities like broken authentication, broken object level authorization, server-side request forgery, unrestricted resource consumption, and more.

Automated tools for API penetration testing can scan different types of APIs, including REST, GraphQL, SOAP, and more.

Advantages of Using Automated API Pen Testing Tools

API penetration testing using automated scanners offers many advantages, as mentioned below.

Efficiency and Speed

In today’s fast-paced digital world, rapid security testing is pivotal to protecting your applications and APIs against emerging cyber threats. Here comes the role of automated scanners that make application testing a breeze. These scanners enable AppSec teams to perform pen testing in a few minutes that may take hours manually.

Consequently, speedy pen testing helps uncover vulnerabilities early before hackers can exploit them, providing robust security against cyber threats. Automated pen testing tools can scan thousands of API endpoints in the same timeframe as a human tester scans one.

Ideal for Frequent Testing

Regular and frequent pen testing is crucial to maintaining a robust cyber security posture. This is more relevant for agile or CI/CD environments where changes happen fast. Your AppSec team can leverage frequent automated pen testing within your SDLC by integrating pen testing tools into the workflow.

The integration of API pentesting tools into your CI/CD pipeline will enable your AppSec team to perform rapid API testing and detect vulnerabilities early. As a result, your APIs will become resilient to cyber threats that thwart hacking attempts.

Consistent Testing

When it comes to manual pen testing, there are often chances of inconsistency in tests due to human error, fatigue, or missed steps. It means that tests can vary depending on who performs them, how they are performed, and how often they are performed. Consequently, the test results may vary, and even some critical vulnerabilities may escape detection.

On the other hand, automated API pen testing tools offer consistent security assessments regardless of when or how frequently these tests are performed. Consistency is more relevant in modern development environments due to CI/CD pipelines, rapid API changes, and frequent code updates.

With such tools, you can run the exact same tests at every build and release cycle to detect vulnerabilities precisely.

Comprehensive Coverage

While manual pentesting offers an in-depth security assessment, automated pen test scanners efficiently evaluate the entire attack surface of APIs to uncover vulnerabilities across all endpoints. It covers all API endpoints more efficiently than manual pen tests because there isn’t a chance of missing anything.

Automated tools are equipped with API discovery that scans and catalogues for various endpoints. They can identify shadow, zombie, and other unsecured APIs. These tools leverage a vast database of vulnerabilities and analyze patterns of emerging threats.

Continuous Monitoring and Testing

Many automated pen testing tools for APIs support scheduled scanning, allowing continuous assessment of your security posture. Continuous security testing helps regularly test APIs and detect vulnerabilities early before they become critical security risks.

Continuous testing helps evaluate configuration changes, new vulnerabilities, and outdated components to keep APIs secure against potential cyberattacks. Regular security testing is pivotal to maintaining a robust security posture for your APIs with early detection and remediation of security issues.

Integration into SDLC

Mostly, API security assessment tools can be easily integrated into CI/CD pipelines or Agile environments to automate security testing within SDLC. Besides, it is also possible to integrate these tools into other security solutions such as SIEM platforms.

Integration of API pen test tools in CI/CD enables shift-left security testing that reduces the chances of potential cyberattacks.

Scalability

Automated tools for API penetration testing can be set up to scan APIs in complex and vast IT environments. So, no matter if you manage a single application or thousands, pen test tools can effectively test them without a hitch.

Scalability is a vital feature of automated pen testing that demands a lot of time in manual testing. It takes a significant amount of time and effort to test thousands of applications manually, while the same can be done in a few hours in automated testing.

What are the Steps to Perform API Security Testing with Automated Scanners?

Let’s see the automated API pen testing steps to assess your APIs and protect them from potential cyberattacks.

Prerequisites

The first step in API security assessment is preparing for testing. It involves defining the scope and objectives clearly for the test. For example, it must be clearly defined which APIs are to be tested (SOAP, REST, and GraphQL) and what level of access is to be given. Additionally, gather API definitions like OpenAPI/Swagger specs and Postman Collections.

Further, understanding the API data flow and functionality is also important for the test. Identify your goals for API testing, like discovering vulnerabilities or conducting compliance audits.

Select the Right Scanner

Choosing the right scanner is an essential step in evaluating APIs for security vulnerabilities. There are many essential considerations you should keep in mind when it comes to choosing an automated scanner, such as compatibility with API type and protocol and seamless integration into CI/CD.

Configuring the Scanner

Setting up the API pen testing tool is the next crucial step in API security assessment. Configurations involve importing API specifications like OpenAPI/Swagger or Postman Collections and entering authentication credentials. Apart from this, you may have to set up or customize scanning policies. Identify the endpoints to be included or excluded from the test.

Run the Automated Scans

Once the pen test is configured, the next step is to conduct the scans. The scans include automated discovery of APIs that identify and catalogue all APIs deployed in your digital landscape. Different types of testing performed by the API pen testing tool include authenticated and unauthenticated scanning, fuzzing, active or passive scanning, etc. The tool can discover various security weaknesses, including OWASP top 10, like broken authentication, injection, unrestricted resource consumption, and more.

Reporting and Remediation

After completing the scan, the pen testing tool for API will generate a detailed report providing an overview of identified issues, severity level, impact, and more. The report is essential to communicate the findings of the test and take appropriate remediation steps.

The report serves as a roadmap for vulnerability remediation, providing essential insights into which vulnerabilities to be addressed first.

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What are the Common Vulnerabilities that Automated API Pentesting Scanners Can Detect?

Automated tools to scan API for vulnerabilities enable you to identify common security weaknesses listed under the OWASP Top 10 API Security Risks as mentioned below.

• Broken Object Level Authorization: This is a kind of vulnerability in which an API fails to check whether an authorized user can access a specific file, resource, or data object. As a result, an attacker can access such files, resources, or data objects by manipulating identifiers like IDs and GUIDs in API requests.
• Broken Authentication: Broken authentication vulnerability occurs when the authentication mechanism is flawed or not properly implemented for an application or API. In that case, an authorized user can bypass user authentication and access protected resources that they are not entitled to access.
• Broken Object Property Level Authorization: This vulnerability occurs when the sensitive properties of an API are exposed to a user who is not authorized to access such properties.
• Unrestricted Resource Consumption: This vulnerability occurs when an API doesn’t have proper constraints that allow excessive use of resources. In this case, the API is missing limits like maximum memory allocation, maximum upload file size, execution timeouts, etc.
• Broken Function Level Authorization: This vulnerability exposes the critical functionality of an API to users that they shouldn’t access due to the flaws in authorization checks. This vulnerability occurs due to uncertain access control policies with different roles, groups, and hierarchies.
• Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows: It is an API security vulnerability in which an API exposes critical business operations without proper authorization. Consequently, attackers can take advantage of such access to fulfill their malicious purposes.
• Server-Side Request Forgery: SSRF is a security flaw that occurs when an API doesn’t validate user-supplied URLs and fetches resources directly. This can cause serious security risks like compromised data or execution of unauthorized commands.
• Security Misconfiguration: Often, APIs and their systems require complex configurations. These configurations, meant to make APIs customizable, can become a hurdle too if not properly managed. Misconfigurations can arise within APIs and systems that make them vulnerable to potential cyberattacks.
• Improper Inventory Management: This vulnerability occurs when API endpoints are not properly documented, tracked, and controlled, which may end up some of them being shadow or zombie APIs.
• Unsafe Consumption of APIs: In this vulnerability, in-house APIs become susceptible to cyberattacks when they receive data from third-party APIs without proper validation and sanitization.

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Secure Your APIs with ZeroThreat’s Next-Gen Automated Pen Testing

APIs are the backbones of modern applications and protecting them is pivotal to securing your digital ecosystems. However, as cyber threats are evolving, traditional AppSec methods are no longer effective in safeguarding application programming interfaces.

While manual pen testing offers an in-depth security assessment of APIs, automated pen testing scanners offer regular assessments to continuously test and resolve security issues. Hence, you should pick a hybrid approach that combines automated pen testing and manual testing.

You need the right API security testing tool – ZeroThreat – to conduct continuous security tests and identify vulnerabilities. Its next-gen automated pentesting offers fast, accurate, and continuous security testing that enables your AppSec team to stay ahead of hackers.

It seamlessly integrates into CI/CD pipelines to offer continuous vulnerability scanning and detection within SDLC, providing incessant security against emerging threats. Give it a try to see how it works.