Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

The concept of ratings has been the accepted standard for making investment decisions. The first commercial credit reporting agency, the Mercantile Agency, was founded in 1841. While this relied on largely subjective methods of evaluation, it wasn’t until the 1960s, when credit reporting became computerized, that the industry consolidated and took off. Since then, credit and financial ratings models have progressed to become objective and trustworthy data points that inform lending decisions.

It’s been reported that 2.6 million user records sourced from the Duolingo app are for sale. The attacker apparently obtained them from an open API provided by the company. There’s a more technical explanation available here. While we talk a lot about the vulnerabilities in the OWASP API Top-10 and the exploits associated with those vulnerabilities, this incident provides a good reminder that not all vulnerabilities are flaws in code. In fact, this API was working as designed.