A Cheatsheet to Build Secure APIs

An insecure API can compromise your entire application. Follow these strategies to mitigate the risk.

1 - Using HTTPS

Encrypts data in transit and protects against man-in-the-middle attacks.

This ensures that data hasn't been tampered with during transmission.

2 - Rate Limiting and Throttling

Rate limiting prevents DoS attacks by limiting requests from a single IP or user.

The goal is to ensure fairness and prevent abuse.

3 - Validation of Inputs

Defends against injection attacks and unexpected data format.

Validate headers, inputs, and payload

4 - Authentication and Authorization

Don't use basic auth for authentication. Instead, use a standard authentication approach like JWTs

Use a random key that is hard to guess as the JWT secret

Make token expiration short

For authorization, use OAuth

5 - Using Role-based Access Control

RBAC simplifies access management for APIs and reduces the risk of unauthorized actions.

Granular control over user permission based on roles.

6 - Monitoring

Monitoring the APIs is the key to detecting issues and threats early.

Use tools like Kibana, Cloudwatch, Datadog, and Slack for monitoring

Don't log sensitive data like credit card info, passwords, credentials, etc.

Author

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