Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

APIs are increasingly becoming the target of choice for attackers. According to the key findings stated in the 2024 Gartner Market Guide for API Protection, "APIs — especially shadow and dormant ones — are causing data breaches among organizations that, on average, exceed the magnitude of other breaches.

A significant vulnerability (CVE-2024-41110) was recently discovered in Docker Engine version 18.09.1.Although the issue was identified and fixed in 2019, the patch did not apply to other major versions, resulting in regression. The vulnerability was assigned a CVSS score of 10 (critical).

Businesses have gone mobile-first, and with good reason—people are spending more time and more money on their phones than ever before. For instance, in 2023, an estimated 66% or 2/3rds of all online orders were made from mobile devices. And in 2024, businesses are expected to spend $402 billion on mobile advertising. Mobile apps have become the first choice for users for their online activities in banking, e-commerce, media streaming, social media, etc.

Cross-site scripting (aka XSS) has rightfully claimed its place as one of the most popular web vulnerabilities. Since its first emergence, somewhere in the dark days of the internet, countless vulnerabilities have been found across websites everywhere. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that XSS has been consistently highlighted as a top risk in the OWASP TOP-10 since the list's very first iteration in 2004!

Whenever a company is notified about or discovers a critical flaw in their system/application that has the potential to be exploited by malicious elements, it’s termed a vulnerability. However, every time a flaw being actively exploited is discovered, code red is punched as the organization’s IT team officially has a Zero-Day vulnerability/exploit on their hands! A zero-day vulnerability is a software vulnerability discovered by attackers before the vendor has become aware of it.

Another day, another API breach in the news. The latest breach occurred on the Life360 platform where an advisory was able to gleam 400k user phone numbers, based on the article written on Bleepingcomputer.com. Known only by their 'emo' handle, they said the unsecured API endpoint used to steal the data provided an easy way to verify each impacted user's email address, name, and phone number.

Breaking into an organisation’s IT infra doesn’t always require complex methods. Hackers often exploit normal applications and API functions in unexpected ways to access sensitive data. For example, the 2019 Venmo breach involved the exploitation of an open API to scrape millions of payment records. A design oversight in the API allowed attackers to exploit its normal functions in an unintended manner—scraping payment records without proper authorization.

As we explored the capabilities of Copilot for Security, we discovered that while the native plugins offer access to a vast array of data, they didn't cover everything we needed for some of our specific use cases and promptbooks. For instance, we wanted detailed insights into Conditional Access policies from Entra ID, Intune policies, Secure Score, and more. Although Microsoft continues to enhance the native plugins by adding new skills, we opted to develop our own custom plugins.

In our recent webinar recent webinar title 'A CISO’s Checklist for Securing APIs and Applications', we delved into the concept of creating an API security playground tailored for both developer and security teams. The core idea revolves around utilizing intentionally vulnerable APIs as training tools. In this blog post, we'll present a curated list of such APIs, each with its own unique set of characteristics.