Most Common Attacks Carried Out On APIs

API Injection Attack

• Injection attacks are carried out by inserting malicious code into the API via a query or request to obtain unauthorized access to data.
• These are most commonly SQL injection attacks, which insert malicious SQL code as a parameter field.

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack

• This aims to disrupt a server with a large amount of traffic. It essentially creates a traffic jam, with no traffic able to be transferred to and from the server. 
• This can break the API by making its data inaccessible to users.

Excessive data exposure

• This is where an API returns unneeded or sensitive data in its responses that could be valuable to hackers.
• This is commonly seen where APIs return complete datasets as they are on backend servers, and the client is relied on to filter the results.

MITM (Man-in-the-middle attack)

• MITM attacks are when a hacker intercepts communication between two programs to obtain the information being transferred between them.
• This risk is much greater if the data in transit is not encrypted, which is why using HTTPS is standard.

Parameter Tampering

• Parameter tampering aims to manipulate parameters sent in API requests, creating access to potentially sensitive information. 
• Parameter tampering is done mainly through input forms submitted by clients on the web.