Mitigating OWASP Web Application Risk: Injection exploits using F5 BIG-IP
Among OWASP Top 10 attacks, SQL injection makes the web application to return sensitive data to the attacker. F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF protects the Web application, Database with robust attack signatures available in it, there by mitigating the attack.Mitigation of OWASP API Security Top 10 2023 using F5 Distributed Cloud Platform
The OWASP API Security project aims to help organizations by providing a guide with a list of the latest top 10 most critical API vulnerabilities and steps to mitigate them. As part of updating the old OWASP API Security risk categories for 2019, the OWASP API Security Top 10 2023 is released. List of vulnerabilities: API1:2023 Broken Object Level Authorization Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA) is a vulnerability that occurs when there is a failure in validation of a user’s permissions to perform a specific task over an object, which may eventually lead to leakage, updation, or destruction of data. To prevent this vulnerability, proper authorization mechanisms should be followed, proper checks should be made to validate a user’s actions on a certain record, and security tests should be performed before deploying any production-grade changes. API2:2023 Broken Authentication Broken Authentication is a critical vulnerability that occurs when an application’s authentication endpoints fail to detect attackers impersonating someone else’s identity and allow partial or full control over the account. To prevent this vulnerability, observability and understanding of all possible authentication API endpoints is needed. Re-authentication should be performed for any confidential changes, multi-factor authentication, captcha-challenge, and effective security solutions should be applied to detect and mitigate credential stuffing, dictionary and brute-force types of attacks. Detailed explanation about the vulnerability with a demo showcasing the mitigation part using F5 Distributed Cloud can be found here API3:2023 Broken Object Property Level Authorization Broken Object Property Level Authorization is one of the new risk categories in the OWASP API Security Top 10 2023. This vulnerability occurs when a user is allowed to access an object’s property without validating their access permissions. Excessive Data Exposure and Mass Assignment which were initially a part of OWASP APISec 2019 are now part of this new vulnerability. To prevent this vulnerability, access privileges of users requesting for a specific object’s property should be scrutinized before exposure by the API endpoints. Use of generic methods and automatically binding client inputs to internal objects or code variables should be avoided and schema-based validation should be enforced. Detailed explanation about the vulnerabilities with demos showcasing the mitigation part using F5 Distributed Cloud can be found here (Excessive Data Exposure, Mass Assignment) API4:2023 Unrestricted Resource Consumption Unrestricted Resource Consumption vulnerability occurs when the system’s resources are being unnecessarily consumed, which could eventually lead to degradation of services and performance latency issues. Although the name has changed, the vulnerability is still the same as that of Lack of Resources & Rate Limiting. To prevent this vulnerability, rate-limiting, maximum size for input payload/parameters and server-side validations of requests should be enforced. Detailed explanation about the vulnerability with a demo showcasing the mitigation part using F5 Distributed Cloud can be found here API5:2023 Broken Function Level Authorization Broken Function Level Authorization occurs when vulnerable API endpoints allow normal users to perform administrative actions or a user from one group is allowed to access a function specific to users of another group. To prevent this vulnerability, access control policies and administrative authorization checks based on user’s group/roles should be implemented. API6:2023 Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows is also a new addition to the list of API vulnerabilities. While writing API endpoints, it is extremely critical for developers to have a clear understanding of the business flows getting exposed by it. To avoid exposing any sensitive business flow and limit its excessive usage, which if not considered, might eventually lead to exploitation by the attackers and cause some serious harm to the business. This also includes securing and limiting access to B2B APIs that are consumed directly and often integrated with minimal protection mechanisms. By keeping automation to work, now-a-days, attackers can bypass traditional protection mechanisms. APIs inefficiency in detecting automated bot attacks not only causes business loss but also it can adversely impact the services for real users as well. To overcome this vulnerability, enterprises need to have a platform to identify whether the request is from a real user or an automated tool by analyzing and tracking patterns of usage. Device fingerprinting, Integrating Captcha solution, blocking Tor requests, are a few methods which can help to minimize the impact of such automated attacks. For more details on automated threats, you can visit OWASP Automated Threats to Web Applications Note: Although the vulnerability is new but it contains some references of API10:2019 Insufficient Logging & Monitoring Detailed explanation about the vulnerability with a demo showcasing the mitigation part using F5 Distributed Cloud can be found here API7:2023 Server-Side Request Forgery After finding a place in the OWASP Top 10 web application vulnerabilities of 2021, SSRF has now been included in the OWASP API Security Top 10 2023 list as well, showing the severity of this vulnerability. Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability occurs when an API fetches an internal server resource without validating the URL from the user. Attackers exploit this vulnerability by manipulating the URL, which in turn helps them retrieve sensitive data from internal servers. To overcome this vulnerability, input data validations should be implemented to ensure that the client supplied input data obeys the expected format. Allow lists should be maintained so that only trusted requests/calls will be processed, and HTTP redirections should be disabled. Detailed explanation about the vulnerability with a demo showcasing the mitigation part using F5 Distributed Cloud can be found here API8:2023 Security Misconfiguration Security Misconfiguration is a vulnerability that may arise when security best practices are overlooked. Unwanted exposure of debug logs, unnecessary enabled HTTP Verbs, unapplied latest security patches, missing repeatable security hardening process, improper implementation of CORS policy, etc. are a few examples of security misconfiguration. To prevent this vulnerability, systems and entire API stack should be maintained up to date without missing any security patches. Continuous security hardening and configuration tracking process should be carried out. Make sure all API communications take place over a secure channel (TLS) and all servers in the HTTP server chain process incoming requests. Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) policy should be set up properly. Unnecessary HTTP verbs should be disabled. Detailed explanation about the vulnerability with a demo showcasing the mitigation part using F5 Distributed Cloud can be found here API9:2023 Improper Inventory Management Improper Inventory Management vulnerability occurs when organizations don’t have much clarity on their own APIs as well as third-party APIs that they use and lack proper documentation. Unawareness with regards to current API version, environment, access control policies, data shared with the third-party etc. can lead to serious business repercussions. Clear understanding and proper documentation are the key to overcoming this vulnerability. All the details related to API hosts, API environment, Network access, API version, Integrated services, redirections, rate limiting, CORS policy should be documented correctly and maintained up to date. Documenting every minor detail is advisable and authorized access should be given to these documents. Exposed API versions should be secured along with the production version. A risk analysis is recommended whenever newer versions of APIs are available. Detailed explanation about the vulnerability with a demo showcasing the mitigation part using F5 Distributed Cloud can be found here API10:2023 Unsafe Consumption of APIs Unsafe Consumption of APIs is again a newly added vulnerability covering a portion of API8:2019 Injection vulnerability. This occurs when developers tend to apply very little or no sanitization to data received from third-party APIs. To overcome this, we should make sure that API interactions take place over an encrypted channel. API data evaluation and sanitization should be carried out before using the data further. Precautionary actions should be taken to avoid unnecessary redirections by using Allow lists. Detailed explanation about the vulnerability with a demo showcasing the mitigation part using F5 Distributed Cloud can be found here Related OWASP API Security article series Broken Authentication Excessive Data Exposure Mass Assignment Lack of Resources & Rate limiting Security Misconfiguration Improper Assets Management Unsafe consumption of APIs Server-Side Request Forgery Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows OWASP API Security Top 10 - 2019Introduction to OWASP API Security Top 10 2023
Introduction to API An Application Programming Interface (API) is a component that enables communication between two different systems by following certain rules. It also adds a layer of abstraction between the two systems where the requester does not know how the other system has derived the result and responded back. Over the past few years, developers have started relying more on APIs as it helps them to meet the needs of today’s rapid application deployment model. As the APIs started getting a wider acceptance it is highly critical to safeguard them by thoroughly testing their behavior and following best security practices. Learn API Security Best Practices. Overview of OWASP API Security The OWASP API Security project aims to help the organizations by providing a guide with a list of the latest top 10 most critical API vulnerabilities and steps to mitigate them. As part of updating the old OWASP API Security risk categories of 2019, recently OWASP API Security Top 10 2023 is released. What’s new in OWASP API Sec 2023? List of vulnerabilities: API1:2023 Broken Object Level Authorization Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA) is a vulnerability that occurs when there is a failure in validation of user’s permissions to perform a specific task over an object which may eventually lead to leakage, updation or destruction of data. To prevent this vulnerability, proper authorization mechanism should be followed, proper checks should be made to validate user’s action on a certain record and security tests should be performed before deploying any production grade changes. API2:2023 Broken Authentication Broken Authentication is a critical vulnerability that occurs when application’s authentication endpoints fail to detect attackers impersonating someone else’s identity and allow partial or full control over the account. To prevent this vulnerability, observability and understanding of all possible authentication API endpoints is needed, re-authentication should be performed for any confidential changes, multi-factor authentication, captcha-challenge and effective security solutions should be applied to detect & mitigate credential stuffing, dictionary and brute force type of attacks. API3:2023 Broken Object Property Level Authorization Broken Object Property Level Authorization (Excessive Data Exposure, Mass Assignment) is one of the new risk categories of OWASP API Security Top 10 2023. This vulnerability occurs when a user is allowed to access an object’s property without validating his access permissions. Excessive Data Exposure and Mass Assignment which were initially a part of OWASP APISec 2019 are now part of this new vulnerability. To prevent this vulnerability, access privileges of users requesting for a specific object's property should be scrutinized before exposure by the API endpoints. Use of generic methods & automatically binding client inputs to internal objects or code variables should be avoided and schema-based validation should be enforced. API4:2023 Unrestricted Resource Consumption Unrestricted Resource Consumption vulnerability occurs when the system’s resources are being unnecessarily consumed which could eventually lead to degradation of services and performance latency issues. Although the name has changed, the vulnerability is still the same as that of Lack of Resources & Rate Limiting. To prevent this vulnerability, rate-limiting, maximum size for input payload/parameters and server-side validations of requests should be enforced. API5:2023 Broken Function Level Authorization Broken Function Level Authorization occurs when vulnerable API endpoints allow normal users to perform administrative actions or user from one group is allowed to access a function specific to users of another group. To prevent this vulnerability, access control policies and administrative authorization checks based on user’s group/roles should be implemented. API6:2023 Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows is also a new addition to the list of API vulnerabilities. While writing API endpoints it is extremely critical for the developers to have a clear understanding of the business flows getting exposed by it. To avoid exposing any sensitive business flow and limit its excessive usage which if not considered, might eventually lead to exploitation by the attackers and cause some serious harm to the business. This also includes securing and limiting access to B2B APIs that are consumed directly and often integrated with minimal protection mechanism. By keeping automation to work, now-a-days attackers can bypass traditional protection mechanisms. APIs inefficiency in detecting automated bot attacks not only causes business loss but also it can adversely impact the services for real users as well. To overcome this vulnerability, enterprises need to have a platform to identify whether the request is from a real user or an automated tool by analyzing and tracking patterns of usage. Device fingerprinting, Integrating Captcha solution, blocking Tor requests, are a few methods which can help to minimize the impact of such automated attacks. For more details on automated threats, you can visit OWASP Automated Threats to Web Applications Note: Although the vulnerability is new but it contains some references of API10:2019 Insufficient Logging & Monitoring API7:2023 Server-Side Request Forgery After finding a place in OWASP Top 10 web application vulnerabilities of 2021, SSRF has now been included in OWASP API Security Top 10 2023 list as well, showing the severity of this vulnerability. Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability occurs when an API fetches an internal server resource without validating the URL from the user. Attackers exploit this vulnerability by manipulating the URL, which in turn helps them to retrieve sensitive data from the internal servers. To overcome this vulnerability, Input data validations should be implemented to ensure that the client supplied input data obeys the expected format. Allow lists should be maintained so that only trusted requests/calls will be processed, and HTTP redirections should be disabled. API8:2023 Security Misconfiguration Security Misconfiguration is a vulnerability that may arise when security best practices are overlooked. Unwanted exposure of debug logs, unnecessary enabled HTTP Verbs, unapplied latest security patches, missing repeatable security hardening process, improper implementation of CORS policy etc. are a few examples of security misconfiguration. To prevent this vulnerability, systems and entire API stack should be maintained up to date without missing any security patches. Continuous security hardening and configurations tracking process should be carried out. Make sure all API communications take place over a secure channel (TLS) and all servers in HTTP server chain process incoming requests. Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) policy should be set up properly. Unnecessary HTTP verbs should be disabled. API9:2023 Improper Inventory Management Improper Inventory Management vulnerability occurs when organizations don’t have much clarity on their own APIs as well as third-party APIs that they use and lack proper documentation. Unawareness with regards to current API version, environment, access control policies, data shared with the third-party etc. can lead to serious business repercussions. Clear understanding and proper documentation are the key to overcome this vulnerability. All the details related to API hosts, API environment, Network access, API version, Integrated services, redirections, rate limiting, CORS policy should be documented correctly and maintained up to date. Documenting every minor detail is advisable and authorized access should be given to these documents. Exposed API versions should be secured along with the production version. A risk analysis is recommended whenever newer versions of APIs are available. API10:2023 Unsafe Consumption of APIs Unsafe Consumption of APIs is again a newly added vulnerability covering a portion of API8:2019 Injection vulnerability. This occurs when developers tend to apply very little or no sanitization on the data received from third-party APIs. To overcome this, we should make sure that API interactions take place over an encrypted channel. API data evaluation and sanitization should be carried out before using the data further. Precautionary actions should be taken to avoid unnecessary redirections by using Allow lists. How F5 XC can help? F5 Distributed Cloud (F5 XC) has a wide range of solutions for deploying, managing and securing application deployments in different environments. XC WAAP is a F5 SaaS offering. The 4 key components of WAAP are Web Application Firewall, API Security, Bot Defense, DDoS Mitigation. All these solutions are powered on top of the XC platform. In addition to WAAP, F5 XC has other solutions to offer such as Fraud and Abuse, AIP, CDN, MCN, DNS and so on. API security in XC WAAP simplifies operations with automated discovery of API transactions using AI/ML Engine along with insights of performance. It also provides API protection features like Rate Limiting, PII safeguard along with comprehensive security monitoring GUI dashboard. API security provides feasibility to import the inventory file in the form of swagger which helps to know exactly what endpoints, methods and payloads are valid, and this tightens security against abuse. F5 XC management console helps the customers to leverage the benefit of monitoring, managing, and maintaining their application’s traffic from a single place irrespective of its platform on which it is hosted, it could be multi-cloud, on prem or edge. Note: This is an initial article covering the overview of proposed most critical API vulnerabilities from OWASP API Security community for 2023. More articles covering detailed insight of each vulnerability and their mitigation steps using F5 XC platform will follow this article in coming days. Meanwhile, you can refer to overview article for OWASP API Security Top 10 2019 which contains link to detailed articles covering API vulnerabilities of 2019 and how F5 XC can help to mitigate them. Related OWASP API Security article series: Broken Authentication Excessive Data Exposure Mass Assignment Lack of Resources & Rate limiting Security Misconfiguration Improper Assets Management Unsafe consumption of APIs Server-Side Request Forgery Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows OWASP API Security Top 10 - 2019F5 AI Gateway - Secure, Deliver and Optimize GenAI Apps
AI has revolutionized industries by automating tasks, enabling data-driven decisions, and enhancing efficiency and innovation. While it offers businesses a competitive edge by streamlining operations and improving customer experiences, it also introduces risks such as security vulnerabilities, data breaches, and cost challenges. Businesses must adopt robust cybersecurity measures and carefully manage AI investments to balance benefits with risks. F5 provides comprehensive controls to protect AI and IT infrastructures, ensuring sustainable growth in an AI-driven world. Welcome to F5 AI Gateway - a runtime security and traffic governance solutionMitigating OWASP Web Application Security Top 10 – 2021 risks using F5 Distributed Cloud Platform
Overview: In the early 90’s, applications were in dormant phase and JavaScript & XML were dominating this technology. But in 1999, the first web application was introduced after the release of the Java language in 1995. Later with the adoption of new languages like Ajax, HTML, Node, Angular, SQL, Go, Python, etc. and availability of web application frameworks have boosted application development, deployment, and release to production. With the evolving software technologies, modern web applications are becoming more and more innovative, providing users with a grand new experience and ridiculously ease of interface. With these leading-edge technologies, novel exploit surfaces are also exposed which made them a primary target for intruders/hackers. Application safeguarding against all these common exploits is a necessary step in protecting backend application data. Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) is one of those security practices which protects application with above issues. This article is the first part of the series and covers OWASP evolution, its importance and overview of top 10 categories. Before diving into OWASP Web Application Security Top 10, let’s time travel to era of 1990’s and try to identify challenges the application customers, developers and users were facing. Below are some of them: Rapid and diversified cyber-attacks has become a major concern and monitoring/categorizing them was difficult Product owners are concerned about application security & availability and are in desperate need of a checklist/report to understand their application security posture Developers are looking for recommendations to securely develop code before running into security flaws in production No consolidated repo to manage, document and provide research insights for every security vulnerability After running into the above concerns, people across the globe have come together in 2001 and formed an international open-source community OWASP. It’s a non-profit foundation which has people from different backgrounds like developers, evangelist, security experts, etc. The main agenda for this community is to solve application related issues by providing: Regularly updating “OWASP TOP 10” report which provides insights of latest top 10 security issues in web applications Report also provides security recommendations to protect them from these issues Consolidated monitoring and tracking of application vulnerabilities Conducting events, trainings and conferences around the world to discuss, solve and provide preventive recommendations for latest security issues OWASP also provides security tools, research papers, libraries, cheat sheets, books, presentations and videos covering application security testing, secure development, and secure code review OWASP WEB SECURITY TOP 10 2021: With the rapid increase of cyber-attacks and because of dynamic report updates, OWASP gained immense popularity and is considered as one of the top security aspects which application companies are following to protect their modern applications against known security issues. Periodically they release their Top 10 vulnerabilities report and below are the latest Top 10 - 2021 categories with their summary: A01:2021-Broken Access Control Access controls enforce policy such that users cannot act outside of their intended permissions. Also called authorization, it allows or denies access to your application's features and resources. Misuse of access control enables unauthorized access to sensitive information, privilege escalation and illegal file executions. Check this article on protection against broken access vulnerabilities A02:2021-Cryptographic Failures In 2017 OWASP top 10 report, this attack was known as Sensitive Data Exposure, which focuses on failures related to cryptography leading to exposure of sensitive data. Check this article on cryptographic failures A03:2021-Injection An application is vulnerable to injection if user data and schema is not validated by the application. Some of the common injections are XSS, SQL, NoSQL, OS command, Object Relational Mapping (ORM), etc., causing data breaches and loss of revenue. Check this article on safeguarding against injection exploits A04:2021-Insecure Design During the development cycle, some phases might be reduced in scope which leads to some of the vulnerabilities. Insecure Design represents the weaknesses i.e., lack of security controls which are not tracked in other categories throughout the development cycle. Check this article on design flaws and mitigation A05:2021-Security Misconfiguration This occurs when security best practices are overlooked allowing attackers to get into the system utilizing the loopholes. XML External Entities (XXE), which was previously a Top 10 category, is now a part of security misconfiguration. Check this article on protection against misconfiguration vulnerabilities A06:2021-Vulnerable and Outdated Components Applications used in enterprises are prone to threats such as code injection, buffer overflow, command injection and cross-site scripting from unsupported, out of date open-source components and known exploited vulnerabilities. Utilizing components with security issues makes the application itself vulnerable. Intruders will take use of this defects and exploit the deprecated packages thereby gaining access to backend applications. Check this article on finding outdated components A07:2021-Identification and Authentication Failures Confirmation of the user's identity, authentication, authorization and session management is critical to protect applications against authentication-related attacks. Apps without valid authorization, use of default credentials and unable to detect bot traffic are some of the scenarios in this category. Check this article on identifying and protection against bots A08:2021-Software and Data Integrity Failures Software and data integrity failures occurs when updates are pushed to the deployment pipeline without verifying its integrity. Insecure Deserialization, which was a separate category in OWASP 2017, has now become a part of this larger category set. Check this article on software failures protection A09:2021-Security Logging and Monitoring Failures As a best recommendation, we shall always log all incoming request details and monitor application for fraudulent transactions, invalid logins, etc. to identify if there are any attacks or breaches. Applications without logging capabilities provide opportunities to the attackers to exploit the application and may lead to many security concerns. Without logging and monitoring we won’t be able to validate the application traffic and can’t identify the source of the breach. Check this article for identifying logging issues A10:2021-Server-Side Request Forgery Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) attack is a technique which allows intruders to manipulate the server-side application vulnerability and make a malicious request to the internal-only resources. Attacker exploits this flaw by modifying/crafting a URL which forces the server to retrieve and disclose sensitive information. Check this article which focusses on SSRF mitigation NOTE: This is an overview article of this OWASP series, check the below links to prevent these vulnerabilities using F5 Distributed Cloud Platform. OWASP Web Application Security Series: Broken access mitigation Cryptographic failures Injection mitigation Insecure design mitigation Security misconfiguration prevention Vulnerable and outdated components Identification failures prevention Software failures mitigation Security logging issues prevention SSRF MitigationMitigate OWASP LLM Security Risk: Sensitive Information Disclosure Using F5 NGINX App Protect
This short WAF security article covered the critical security gaps present in current generative AI applications, emphasizing the urgent need for robust protection measures in LLM design deployments. Finally we also demonstrated how F5 Nginx App Protect v5 offers an effective solution to mitigate the OWASP LLM Top 10 risks.OWASP Tactical Access Defense Series: Broken Object Property Level Authorization and BIG-IP APM
AUTHOR NOTE: Unauthorized access to private/sensitive object properties may result in data disclosure, data loss, or data corruption. Under certain circumstances, unauthorized access to object properties can lead to privilege escalation or partial/full account takeover. In this article we are going through API3 item from OWASP top 10 API Security risks exploring BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) role in our arsenal. Identifying Vulnerable APIs In order to identify the API endpoint is vulnerable to Broken Object Property Level Authorization, Sensitive properties exposure of certain object for non-intended user (Excessive Data Exposure). import requests # Assuming the API endpoint for retrieving user data is /api/users api_endpoint = "https://example.com/api/users" # Sending a GET request to the API endpoint response = requests.get(api_endpoint) # Checking if the request was successful (status code 200) if response.status_code == 200: # Printing the response content (which could contain excessive data) print(response.json()) else: print("Failed to retrieve data from the API") API allow to change, add or delete sensitive object property for non-intended user (Mass assignment). import requests # Assuming the API endpoint for updating user information is /api/users api_endpoint = "https://example.com/api/users" # Malicious payload containing additional fields malicious_payload = { "username": "malicious_user", "password": "password123", "isAdmin": True # Malicious user attempts to elevate privileges } # Sending a POST request with the malicious payload response = requests.post(api_endpoint, json=malicious_payload) # Checking if the request was successful (status code 200) if response.status_code == 200: print("User information updated successfully") else: print("Failed to update user information") Object Property Level Authorization involves controlling access to specific properties or attributes of an object within a system. Instead of granting blanket access to an entire object, this approach enables fine-grained control, allowing administrators to restrict or permit access to individual properties based on user roles or permissions. While implementing protection against such security risk involves different aspects, one is making sure the user is authorized to access object property, and here BIG-IP APM plays crucial role. Mitigating Risks with BIG-IP APM BIG-IP APM per-request granularity. With per-request granularity, organizations can dynamically enforce access policies based on various factors such as user identity, device characteristics, and contextual information. This enables organizations to implement fine-grained access controls at the API level, mitigating the risks associated with Broken Object Property Level Authorization. Key Features: Dynamic Access Control Policies: BIG-IP APM empowers organizations to define dynamic access control policies that adapt to changing conditions in real-time. By evaluating each API request against these policies, BIG-IP APM ensures that only authorized users can access specific resources and perform permitted actions. Granular Authorization Rules: BIG-IP APM enables organizations to define granular authorization rules that govern access to individual objects or resources within the API ecosystem. By enforcing strict authorization checks at the object level, F5 APM prevents unauthorized users from tampering with sensitive data or performing unauthorized actions. Conclusion In conclusion, BIG-IP APM per-request granularity is a powerful tool for defending against Broken Object-Level Authorization vulnerabilities in APIs. By enforcing fine-grained access controls at the API level, organizations can mitigate the risks associated with unauthorized access to sensitive data. Additionally, proactive security assessments and vulnerability scans are essential for identifying and addressing vulnerabilities in APIs, thereby strengthening overall security posture in the digital ecosystem. Related Content F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager | F5 Introduction to OWASP API Security Top 10 2023 OWASP Top 10 API Security Risks – 2023 - OWASP API Security Top 10 API Protection Concepts OWASP Tactical Access Defense Series: How BIG-IP APM Strengthens Defenses Against OWASP Top 10 OWASP Tactical Access Defense Series: Broken Object Level Authorization and BIG-IP APM F5 Hybrid Security Architectures (Part 5 - F5 XC, BIG-IP APM, CIS, and NGINX Ingress Controller) OWASP Tactical Access Defense Series: Broken Authentication and BIG-IP APMMitigation of OWASP API Security Risk: Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows using F5 XC
We have already covered different OWASP API risks in our previous articles (check reference section for more details). OWASP continuously analysed API threats in the last few years and has identified new types of risks which are not part of API Security Top 10 - 2019 edition. So, they added these new ones in the 2nd edition of OWASP API Security Top 10 2023 list and this article will cover the nuances of the newly added risk: Unrestricted Access to Sensitive Business Flows. Introduction: API owners should be very cautious of all the API endpoint’s exposed to users and they should identify each endpoint’s business justification. When developing an API Endpoint, we shall understand API use case and its intended scope of user action. Some business flows need to be monitored, restricted or blocked depending on the sensitivity of endpoint data. If any sensitive business flow is not protected, attackers can exploit them and cause some serious damage to the business. Using wide variety of automated tools available in market, hackers can automate the manual process thereby adversely impacting the genuine business workflows. That’s all the theory I have !!. Let’s plunge into a demo application use case and discover how F5 Distributed Cloud Platform (XC) can detect and guard our API application endpoints against this vulnerability. Use case: As part of testing, I was exploring the options available in one of the demo application “F5AIR” which is used for booking some dummy flight tickets and as a promotion this application is also offering 200$ as account balance after every user signup. In the 3rd tab we observed that this balance can be used to create gift cards which can be redeemed by users. After doing thorough research we have identified there are no restrictions on this workflow and it can be exploited using automated tools. Automated tools can be used to create multiple users, generate gift cards from each user and then redeem them into a single valid account to further book flight tickets without paying anything. Because of this risk, businesses can incur losses and so this is marked as a sensitive business flow. Artificial Intelligence is a truly disruptive technology spreading like wildfire and so for the purpose of today’s demo, I am using AXIOM.AI browser extension to automate the above manual workflow steps. It just took me around 30 minutes to understand how it works and was able to automate the above exploited manual steps. After 10 user creations and redeeming their gift cards valid main user will have around 2000$ which can be used to book flight tickets. Note: To showcase how AI tools can be leveraged to exploit modern applications we are using axiom ai tool and intended only for educational purposes. Mitigation Steps: A straightforward one-point solution may not be appropriate for different types of these vulnerabilities. Secops team should dig deeper into their incoming application traffic, differentiate genuine & malicious security data and then identify the API endpoints which are sensitive to their business flows. Once they have analyzed the traffic then they can apply below solutions as per their requirements Configure API Discovery to detect different API vulnerabilities like sensitive Data, API Attributes like Login page, Zombie API, security Posture, etc. You can find more details in this article Configure rate limiting on the sensitive business end points to keep a limit on number of requests - check here for more details on rate limiting Configure API Protection rules for these business API’s to restrict access to applications – check here for more details on API rules Configure Bot Defense to prevent bot attacks – check here for more details on bot protection As an example, let’s consider the above demonstrated AI tool example, to block any bots from accessing demo application we can apply bot defense configurations in root folder location “/” as shown below after which bot AI exploit requests can be mitigated. Note: Above config is for this article’s use case, but users must understand the API endpoint’s which should be protected and apply configs appropriately. We can also try other automation tools like postman which may also be blocked as below In F5 XC console if we navigate to this load balancer security events and bot defense dashboards, we can see these requests are blocked. Conclusion: In this article we explored some insights on this newly added OWASP API Security Top 10 risk, then we shed some light on how AI tools have opened floodgates to a new approach of application threats. Finally, we also revealed the final puzzle of how F5 XC Bot defense can become our elixir in identifying and protecting against this OWASP API risk along with novel AI threats. For more information or to get started check links below: OWASP API Security Top 10 2023 OWASP API Security Top 10 - 2019 F5 Distributed Cloud WAAP
