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59 viewsREST Security Cheatsheet
REST Security Cheatsheet
Uploaded by
Rizki KurniawanCopyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF or read online on Scribd
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9123122, 8:50 AM REST Secunty - OWASP Cheat Sheet Series
REST Security Cheat Sheet
Introduction
REST (or REpresentational State Transfer) is an architectural style first described in Roy Fielding's
Ph.D dissertation on Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures.
It evolved as Fielding wrote the HTTP/1.1 and URI specs and has been proven to be well-suited for
developing distributed hypermedia applications. While REST is more widely applicable, it is most
‘commonly used within the context of communicating with services via HTTP,
The key abstraction of information in REST is a resource. A REST API resource is identified by a
URI, usually a HTTP URL. REST components use connectors to perform actions on a resource by
Using a representation to capture the current or intended state of the resource and transferring that
representation.
The primary connector types are client and server, secondary connectors include cache, resolver
and tunnel.
REST APIs are stateless. Stateful APIs do not adhere to the REST architectural style. State in the
REST acronym refers to the state of the resource which the API accesses, not the state of a
‘session within which the API is called. While there may be good reasons for building a stateful API,
itis important to realize that managing sessions is complex and difficult to do securely
Stateful services are out of scope of this Cheat Sheet: Passing state from client to backend, while
‘making the service technically stateless, is an anti-pattern that should also be avoided as it is prone
to replay and impersonation attacks.
In order to implement flows with REST APIs, resources are typically created, read, updated and
deleted. For example, an ecommerce site may offer methods to create an empty shopping cart, to
‘add items to the cart and to check out the cart. Each of these REST calls is stateless and the
endpoint should check whether the caller is authorized to perform the requested operation.
Another key feature of REST applications is the use of standard HTTP verbs and error codes in the
pursuit or removing unnecessary variation among different services.
Another key feature of REST applications is the use of HATEOAS or Hypermedia As The Engine of
Application State. This provides REST applicetions a self-documenting nature making it easier for
developers to interact with @ REST service without prior knowledge.
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HTTPS
Secure REST services must only provide HTTPS endpoints. This protects authentication
Credentials in transit, for example passwords, API keys or JSON Web Tokens. It also allows clients
to authenticate the service and guarantees integrity of the transmitted deta.
‘See the Transport Layer Protection Cheat Sheet for additional information.
Consider the use of mutually authenticated client-side certificates to provide additional protection
for highly privileged web services.
Access Control
Non-public REST services must perform access control at each API endpoint. Web services in
monolithic applications implement this by means of user authentication, authorization logic and
session management. This has several drawbacks for modem architectures which compose
multiple microservices following the RESTful style,
+ in ofder to minimize latency and reduce coupling between services, the access control
decision should be taken locally by REST endpoints,
‘+ user authentication should be centralised in a Identity Provider (IdP), which issues access
tokens
JWT
There seems to be a convergence towards using JSON Web Tokens (JWT) asthe format for
security tokens. JWTs are JSON data structures containinga set of claims that can be used for
access control decisions. A cryptographic signature or message authentication code (MAC) can be
sed to protect the integrity of the JWT.
+ Ensure JWTs are integrity protected by either a signature ora MAC. Do net allow the
unsecured JWTS: {alg
© Seehere
‘+ In general, signatures should be preferred over MACS for integrity protection cf JWTs.
If MACs are used for integrity protection, every service that is able 1o validate JWTs can also create
new JWTs.using the same key. This means that all services using the samekey have fo mutually
trust each other. Ancther consequence cf this is that a compromise of any service also
compromises alll cther services sharing the same key. See here for additional information.
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The relying party or token consumer validates a JWT by verifying it
integity and claims contained.
+ Arelying party must veify the integrity of the JWT based on its own configuration or hard-
coded logic. It must not rely on the information of the JWT header to select the verification
algorithm. Seehere andere
‘Some claims have been standardized and should be present in JWT used for access controls. At
least the following of the standard claims should be verified:
‘+ Ass orissuer~is this a trusted issuer? Is it the expected owner of the signing key?
‘+ aud or audiences the relying party in the target audience for this JWT?
‘+ exp orexpiration time- is the curent time before the end of the validity period of this teken?
‘+ nb? ornot before time -is the curent time after the start of the validity period of this token?
As JWTs contain details of the authenticated entity (user etc.) disconnect can oocur between the
JWT and the current state of the users session, for example, if the session is terminated earlier
than the expiration time due to an explicit logout or an idle timeout. When an explicit session
‘termination event occurs, a digest or hash of any associated JWTs should be submitted to a block
list on the API which will invalidate that JWT for any requests until the expiration of the token. See
the JSON_Web_Token_for_Java_Cheat_Sheet forfurther details.
API Keys
Public REST services without access control run the risk of being farmed leading to excessive bills
forbandwidth or compute cycles. API keys can be used to mitigate this risk. They ate also often
Used by organisation to monetize APIs;intead of blocking high-frequency calls, cients are given
access in accordance to a purchased access plan.
‘API keys can reduce the impact of deniat-of-service attacks. However, when they afe issued to
third-party clients, they are relatively easy to compromise
‘+ Require API keys for every request to the protected endpoint.
‘+ Retum 429 Too Many Requests HTTP response codeif requests are coming in too quickly.
‘+ Revoke the API key if the client violates the usage agreement.
+ Donot rely exclusively on API keys to protect sensitive, critical or high-value resources.
Restrict HTTP methods
+ Apply an allow list cf permitted HTTP Methods e.g. GET, PosT, PUT.
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‘* Reject all requests not matching the allow list with HTTP response code 45 Method not
alloned .
+ Make sure the caller is authorised to use the incoming HTTP method on the resource
collection, action, and record
In Java EE in particular, this can be difficult to implement properly. See Bypassing Web
Authentication and Authorization with HTTP Verb Tampering for an explanation of this common
misconfiguration.
Input validation
+ Do not trust input parameters/objects.
+ Validate input: length / range / format and type.
+ Achieve an implicit input validation by using strong types like numbers, booleans, dates, times
or fixed data ranges in API parameters.
* Constrain string inputs with regexps.
+ Reject unexpected/illegal content.
+ Make use of validation/sanitation libraries or frameworks in your specific language.
+ Define an appropriate request size limit and reject requests exceeding the limit with HTTP
response status 413 Request Entity Too Large.
+ Consider logging input validation failures. Assume that someone who is performing hundreds
of failed input validations per second is up to no good.
+ Have a look at input validation cheat sheet for comprehensive explanation.
+ Use a secure parser for parsing the incoming messages. If you are using XML, make sure to
use a parser that is not vulnerable to XXE and similar attacks.
Validate content types
‘A REST request or response body should match the intended content type inthe header. Otherwise
this could cause misinterpretation at the consumet/producer side and lead to code
injection /execution,
‘+ Document all supported content types in your API.
Validate request content types
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‘Reject requests containing unexpected or missing content type headers with HTTP response
status 406 Unacceptable OF 415 Unsupported Media Type.
‘+ For XML content types ensure appropriate XML parser hardening, see the XXE cheat sheet,
‘+ Avoid accidentally exposing unintended content types by explicitly defining content types eg.
Jersey (Java) Sconsumes(“application/ json"); @produces("application/json") . This
avoids XXE-altack vectors for example.
‘Send safe response content types
Itis common for REST services to allow multiple response types (@.g. aoplication/xnl or
appLicetion/ json, and the client specifies the preferred order of response types Ly the Accept
header in the request.
‘+ DoNOT simply copy the Accept headerto the Content-type header of theresponse.
+ Reject the request (ideally with 9 406 Not Accepteble response) ifthe Accept header does
Not specifically contain one of the allowable types.
Services inching script code (e.g. JavaScript) in ther responses must be especially careful to
defend against header injection attack.
+ Ensure sending intended content type headers in your response matcting your body content
€g, application/json andNnct application/javascript.
Management endpoints
‘+ Avoid exposing management endpoints via Intemet.
‘+ If management endpoints must be accessible via the Intemet, make sure that users must use
a strong authentication mechanism. e.g. multifactor.
‘+ Expose management endpoints via different HTTP ports or hosts preferably on a different NIC
‘and restricted subnet.
‘+ Restrict access to these endpoints by firewall rules or use of access control lists.
Error handling
+ Respond with genetic error messages - avoid revealing details cf the failure unnecessarily.
‘+ Donot pass technical details (e.g, call stacks or other intemal tints) to the client.
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Audit logs
‘+ Write audit logs before and after security related events.
+ Consider logging token validation errors in order to detect attacks.
‘+ Take care of log injection attacks by sanitizing log data beforehand.
Security Headers
‘There are anumber of security related headers that can be retumedin the HTTP responses 10
instruct browsers to act in specific ways. Hewever, some of these headers are intended tobe used
with HTML responses, and as such may provide little orno security benefits on an API that does
not return HTML.
The following headers should be included in all API responses:
Header Rationale
Cache-Control: no-store Prevent sensitive information from being cached.
Content-Seeurity-Policy To protect against drag-and-
