It’s no exaggeration to say that APIs are the backbone of the modern digital economy. API usage has seen staggering exponential growth over the last two decades with sources like Postman's 2022 State of the API Report illustrating just how embedded APIs are into our modern world. In 2022, the Postman API platform saw 20 million users and over 1 billion API requests created.
The latest Salt Labs State of API Security report is out, and we’re excited to share with you some of the key findings. The security industry news has frequently covered high-profile application programming interface (API) breaches over the past few years, so it’s no surprise that our research found that attackers have upped their activity. Salt Labs analyzed the past year of Salt customer data and found a 400% increase in unique attackers just over the last six months alone.
The recent SCARLETEEL incident highlights the importance of detecting security threats early in the development cycle. With Terraform state files, attackers can easily access sensitive information and gain unauthorized access to your cloud infrastructure. In this case, the attackers exploited a containerized workload and used it to perform privilege escalation into an AWS account, stealing software and credentials.
Regardless of the techniques used, going big, expensive, and glossy – while potentially useful - doesn’t replace the need for a well-reasoned approach to securing assets founded on traditional activities and principles. Innumerable assets are housed behind APIs, and the widespread use of APIs means they are high-profile targets. Securing them is of the utmost importance.
A joint advisory on LockBit 3.0 ransomware, CISA’s latest tool which detects hacking activity in Microsoft cloud services, and ScarCruft’s evolving arsenal.
Last month, Lead Partner Solutions Architect, David Schott, presented a demo on how Snyk works alongside Amazon Web Services (AWS) to identify vulnerabilities at every level of development and infrastructure. David covered why agile development in the cloud requires a different security approach than simply using the IT security methods of the past. Then, he showed a real-time example of how Snyk’s AWS cloud security tools can find and mitigate common vulnerabilities.
We’ve already had the first major API-related cybersecurity incidents for 2023. The T-Mobile API breach exposed the personally identifiable information (PII) of 37 million customers. The API attack had been going on since November but was not discovered and disclosed until January 19, illustrating the threat of the “low and slow” approach of API attacks, which are increasing at a steady pace.
