When was the last time you bought a new gadget for yourself? Did you share your name and contact details with the brand rep? You are not alone to do that. These days it’s become the shopping protocol. We share our data with every digital transaction we make. Whether we realize it or not, we do it every time we stream music, manage online banking, shop online, or navigate through GPS. This sharing happens through APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), which are integral to almost every digital task. APIs play a crucial role in connecting different systems, enabling seamless data exchange, thereby becoming the lifeblood of modern applications.

However, the more ubiquitous APIs are becoming the more prone to attack they have been in recent years. With this enhanced significance of APIs comes a greater need for their security as they are increasingly becoming prime targets of threat actors to exploit vulnerabilities and scrape sensitive data. The recent Dell data breach highlights the severity of this issue even more prominently. Records of 49 million customers were compromised when their names, addresses, and Dell hardware information was illegally accessed.

Data Breaches via APIs

The recent incident highlighted several critical API security challenges that can pose substantial risks for organizations if not addressed. It brought out some pressing security issues, such as inadequate rate limiting and brute force attacks.

What is Rate Limiting?

Rate limiting refers to controlling the number of requests an API can handle from a single client within a specific time frame. In other words, rate limiting is a technique used in network and application security to control the rate at which user requests interact with a web or API resource. It sets a cap on the number of requests a user (or a bot) can make in a specific time frame. Rate limiting helps prevent resource overuse and protects against API abuse methods including denial-of-service attacks and/or brute force attacks.

What Makes Rate Limiting Crucial for API security?

1. Sets Reasonable Limits: Establishing practical thresholds for your API based on its capacity and anticipated usage by considering factors such as server load, bandwidth, and database performance helps ensure the system runs smoothly without getting overwhelmed by too many requests at once.
2. Differentiates User Types: Implementing varying rate limits based on user roles to manage resource usage more effectively ensures that critical operations are prioritized, and essential functionality remains available, even if non-critical features need to be temporarily restricted. For instance, set stricter limits for anonymous users, more generous limits for registered users, and the highest limits for administrators.
3. Betters Experience: When a client surpasses the established limit, it's essential to respond with appropriate HTTP status codes, such as "429 Too Many Requests." This signals to the client that they've exceeded their allotted usage and need to adjust their behavior. Alongside the status code, it's crucial to provide clear error messages guiding users on what went wrong and how they can rectify the situation. This clarity helps users understand the issue and take necessary actions to avoid further limitations, improving their overall experience with the service.
4. Prevents Network Abuse: Rate limiting sets boundaries on the number of requests or actions that users can make within a specific timeframe. By doing so, rate limiting helps distribute the workload evenly across the system, preventing any single user or group from monopolizing resources and causing performance issues.
5. Enhances Cost Efficiency: Rate limiting assists in managing bandwidth and server resources, which can result in cost efficiencies for organizations experiencing high network traffic. By controlling the volume of incoming requests or data transmissions, rate limiting prevents excessive consumption of network bandwidth and server resources.

For a layman, rate limiting is like setting ground rules at a buffet. It ensures that no single person can take all the food, leaving others hungry. Similarly, in digital services, rate limiting makes sure that no one user or group can hog the resources, ensuring everyone gets a fair share and smooth experience.

What Does Lack of Proper Rate Limiting Lead To?

1. Data Scraping: Data scraping means a technique wherein one computer

program extracts data from another program’s output. Data scraping frequently appears in the form of web scraping, which involves employing an application to gather valuable information from a website. Imagine, you have a treasure chest filled with valuable items. Now, imagine someone using a tool to repeatedly knock on the chest, hoping to find a weak spot that will allow them to peek inside and grab whatever they can. That's similar to how threat actors exploit weaknesses in APIs to scrape sensitive data.

1. Brute Force Attacks: APIs without rate limits are susceptible to brute force attacks. The term "brute force" originates from the attackers' relentless and forceful attempts to breach user accounts. Despite its age, brute force attacks persist as a favored tactic among hackers due to their simplicity and proven effectiveness. Imagine you have a lock on your front door, and someone is trying to guess the combination by trying every possible combination one after another. They're not using any clever tricks or insider knowledge; they're just trying every option until they get it right. That's essentially what a brute force attack is in API security. Attackers use automated tools to repeatedly guess usernames, passwords, or other authentication credentials until they find the correct ones, gaining unauthorized access to the API.

Ease of Access: A Double-Edged Sword

Although APIs are designed for ease of use and enabling developers to integrate services seamlessly, this accessibility can backfire in some scenarios. Some APIs allow unauthenticated access, assuming only authorized users will use them. Attackers exploit this oversight. Weak authentication mechanisms (e.g., API keys in URLs) make it easy for attackers to intercept and abuse them.

Secure Your API Access

Organizations should implement robust authentication methods (OAuth, JWT, API tokens) to verify users’ identities, avoid using sensitive information in URLs, control access based on user roles and permissions, limit what each user can do within the API, and regularly review and update security measures.

How Does Rapifuzz Implement Rate Limiting?

Advanced API security tools like RAPIFUZZ™ empower clients to maintain system stability, prevent abuse, and ensure fair usage. When clients test their application on Rapifuzz, it specifies the maximum number of requests their application can handle per second (RPS).

Rate Limit: Clients can set their desired rate limit.

Burst Limit: Rapifuzz allows a short burst of requests beyond the sustained rate limit.