(中文版请戳这:中文版)
Checklist of the most important security countermeasures when designing, testing, and releasing your API.
- Don't use
Basic Auth
Use standard authentication (e.g. JWT, OAuth). - Don't reinvent the wheel in
Authentication
,token generating
,password storing
use the standards.
- Use random complicated key (
JWT Secret
) to make brute forcing token very hard. - Don't extract the algorithm from the payload. Force algorithm in the backend (
HS256
orRS256
). - Make token expiration (
TTL
,RTTL
) as short as possible. - Don't store sensitive data in the JWT payload, it can be decoded easily.
- Always validate
redirect_uri
on server side to allow only whitelisted URLs. - Always try to exchange for code not tokens (don't allow
response_type=token
). - Use
state
parameter with a random hash to prevent CSRF on OAuth authentication process. - Define default scope, and validate scope parameter for each application.
- Limit requests (Throttling) to avoid DDoS / Bruteforce attacks.
- Use HTTPS on server side to avoid MITM (Man In The Middle Attack).
- Use
HSTS
header with SSL to avoid SSL Strip attack.
- Use proper HTTP method according to operation ,
GET (read)
,POST (create)
,PUT (replace/update)
andDELETE (to delete a record)
. - Validate
content-type
on request Accept header ( Content Negotiation ) to allow only your supported format (e.g.application/xml
,application/json
... etc) and respond with406 Not Acceptable
response if not matched. - Validate
content-type
of posted data as you accept (e.g.application/x-www-form-urlencoded
,multipart/form-data ,application/json
... etc ). - Validate User input to avoid common vulnerabilities (e.g.
XSS
,SQL-Injection
,Remote Code Execution
... etc). - Don't use any sensitive data (
credentials
,Passwords
,security tokens
, orAPI keys
) in the URL, but use standard Authorization header.
- Check if all endpoint protected behind the authentication to avoid broken authentication.
- User own resource id should be avoided. Use
/me/orders
instead of/user/654321/orders
- Don't use auto increment id's use
UUID
instead. - If you are parsing XML files, make sure entity parsing is not enabled to avoid
XXE
(XML external entity attack). - If you are parsing XML files, make sure entity expansion is not enabled to avoid
Billion Laughs/XML bomb
via exponential entity expansion attack. - Use CDN for file uploads.
- If you are dealing with huge amount of data, use Workers and Queues to return response fast to avoid HTTP Blocking.
- Do not forget to turn the DEBUG mode OFF.
- Send
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
header. - Send
X-Frame-Options: deny
header. - Send
Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'none'
header. - Remove fingerprinting headers -
X-Powered-By
,Server
,X-AspNet-Version
etc. - Force
content-type
for your response , if you returnapplication/json
then your responsecontent-type
isapplication/json
. - Don't return sensitive data like
credentials
,Passwords
,security tokens
. - Return the proper status code according to the operation completed. (e.g.
200 OK
,400 Bad Request
,401 Unauthorized
,405 Method Not Allowed
... etc).
Feel free to contribute , fork -> edit -> submit pull request. For any questions drop us an email at team@shieldfy.io.