This engagement tests your REST or GraphQL API against the OWASP API Security Top 10, directly at the endpoint level, and delivers a report focused on the authorization and data-exposure flaws that dominate real API incidents.
Type to search across the blog, guides, tools, and services.
APIs are where modern applications actually live, and where modern breaches actually happen. Behind every web and mobile front end is an API doing the real work, and an attacker who ignores the polished interface and talks to that API directly often finds it far less guarded than the UI suggests. Testing the API on its own terms is no longer optional.
This engagement tests your REST or GraphQL API against the OWASP API Security Top 10, directly at the endpoint level, and delivers a report focused on the authorization and data-exposure flaws that dominate real API incidents.
The UI is not a security boundary. Front ends hide buttons and fields, but the API behind them is fully reachable with simple tools, and an attacker uses those tools rather than your interface. Any authorization or validation you enforce only in the browser is effectively absent from the API's point of view, and that gap is exactly what API testing targets.
The dominant API risk is broken object-level authorization, where an endpoint returns a record based on an id without checking that the caller owns it. It tops the OWASP API Security Top 10 because it is both extremely common and directly exposes user data, and it can only be found by a tester manipulating requests across multiple accounts.
APIs also fail in ways specific to how they are built: mass assignment that lets a client set fields it should not, endpoints that return far more data than the UI shows, and missing rate limits on sensitive actions. These require a methodology built for APIs, not a generic web scan pointed at a base URL.
The top API risk: testing whether changing an object id returns or modifies data belonging to another user, across every endpoint and object type, authenticated as multiple accounts.
Whether a lower-privileged caller can invoke administrative or restricted operations by calling the endpoint directly.
Whether a client can set fields it should not by adding them to a request, and whether responses leak internal fields or other users' data the UI never shows.
Token handling, authentication flaws, and missing rate limits on sensitive endpoints such as login, transfers, or code entry.
The report is written for API developers and reviewers. It contains:
An endpoint returning another user's object when an id is changed, the most common and most damaging API flaw.
A normal user successfully calling an admin-only endpoint because the server does not check their role.
A request that sets a protected field such as a role, balance, or tenant id simply by including it in the body.
Responses containing internal or sensitive fields the client never needs, left to the front end to hide.
Because attackers do. The API is fully reachable without your UI, and any control enforced only in the browser is absent at the API level. The most serious findings, especially broken authorization, are only visible when you test the API directly.
Yes. Both are covered, with attention to their specific pitfalls, such as GraphQL query depth and over-fetching alongside the standard authorization and data-exposure risks.
Access credentials for a few accounts at different privilege levels, and documentation or a collection of endpoints if available. Testing across multiple accounts is what reveals broken authorization.
Usually one to two weeks depending on the number of endpoints and roles, followed by the report. We confirm scope in a short call first.
Book a free 30-minute scoping call. We agree the scope, timeline, and a fixed price up front — no obligation, and no surprises for your deadline.