Approov Blog

API Abuse (6)

In this article you will start by learning what Third Party APIs are, and why you shouldn’t access them directly from within your mobile app. Next you will learn what a Reverse Proxy is, followed by when and why you should use it to protect the access to the Third Party APIs used in your mobile app. Read Full Story

For zero trust mobile apps and APIs, credentials aren’t nearly enough. Read Full Story

As APIs become a critical part of almost every business, the need to build a robust API security strategy grows infinitely. API calls account for 83% of web traffic, according to the Akamai 2019 [state of the internet] / security: Retail Attacks and API Traffic report. The largest API directory now lists nearly 22,000 public APIs, up from 12,000 in 2015. A majority of companies now consider APIs to be critical to business strategy and imperative for developing partner ecosystems, enhancing customer value and creating new revenue opportunities. Cloud Elements, in its third annual State of API Integration report, recently found that businesses planned to deploy an average of 18 new APIs in 2019, compared to just 11.5 in 2018. Read Full Story

Two particularly challenging forms of API abuse are Aggregation and Cheating as a Service. In both these cases your own users are enabling and sometimes funding the individuals and organizations abusing your APIs. Read Full Story

Our first batch of business level attacks are Data Scrapers and Account Hijack. We also take a look at the lucrative business of Fake Account Factories. Read Full Story

2017 has seen our customers tackling a wide range of abuse and misuse of their Mobile APIs. We are seeing multiple approaches where the business process transparency provided by APIs has resulted in exploitation. Time for a retrospective... Read Full Story

The number of devices connected to the internet has exploded in recent years as everyone becomes permanently attached to their phone or tablet. As the number of mobile users has increased, there has been movement away from websites towards mobile apps. Large companies can gain more information about users when they use their app, and can also provide a more fully featured experience by offering offline functionality or by making use of the phone’s camera, accelerometer or GPS. Users tend to prefer them as well because they offer a richer experience. Read Full Story