Product Solutions Open Source Pricing Search or jump to...

Sign in Sign up

shieldfy / API-Security-Checklist Public Notifications Fork 2.6k Star 21.4k

Code Issues 12 Pull requests 1 Actions Projects Security Insights

master 1 branch 0 tags Code About

Checklist of the most important

339 commits security countermeasures when
designing, testing, and releasing your
CONTRIBUTING.md add languages list link to CONTRIBUTING.md file 6 years ago API

LICENSE Initial commit 6 years ago api security jwt oauth2

README-ar.md Sync. 5 months ago

Readme
README-bn.md Sync. 5 months ago MIT license

Activity
README-cs.md Sync. 5 months ago
21.4k stars
README-de.md Sync. 5 months ago
540 watching
README-el.md Sync. 5 months ago 2.6k forks

README-es.md Sync. 5 months ago Report repository

README-fa.md Sync. 5 months ago

README-fr.md Sync. 5 months ago Releases

No releases published
README-hi.md Sync. 5 months ago

README-id.md Sync. 5 months ago

Packages
README-it.md Sync. 5 months ago
No packages published
README-ja.md Fix mixed forms in ja 2 months ago

README-ko.md Sync. 5 months ago

Used by 11
README-lo.md Translate Monitoring Section 5 months ago

+3
README-mk.md Sync. 5 months ago

README-ml.md Update README-ml.md 4 months ago

README-mn.md Sync. 5 months ago Contributors 84

README-nl.md Sync. 5 months ago

README-pl.md Sync. 5 months ago

README-pt_BR.md Sync. 5 months ago

+ 73 contributors
README-ru.md Sync. 5 months ago

README-th.md Sync. 5 months ago

README-tr.md Sync. 5 months ago

README-tw.md Sync. 5 months ago

README-uk.md Sync. 5 months ago

README-vi.md Sync. 5 months ago

README-zh.md Sync. 5 months ago

README.md Update the Lao language link's text. Make it more understandable. 5 months ago

README.md

繁中版 | 简中版 | ‫ | العربية‬বাংলা | Čeština | Deutsch | Ελληνικά | Español | ‫ | فارسی‬Français | हिंदी | Indonesia |
Italiano | 日本語 | 한국어 | ພາສາລາວ | Македонски | മലയാളം | Монгол | Nederlands | Polski | Português
(Brasil) | Русский | ไทย | Türkçe | Українська | Tiếng Việt

API Security Checklist

Checklist of the most important security countermeasures when designing, testing, and releasing your API.

Authentication
 Don't use Basic Auth . Use standard authentication instead (e.g., JWT).
Don't reinvent the wheel in Authentication , token generation , password storage . Use the standards.
Use Max Retry and jail features in Login.
Use encryption on all sensitive data.

JWT (JSON Web Token)

Use a random complicated key ( JWT Secret ) to make brute forcing the token very hard.
Don't extract the algorithm from the header. Force the algorithm in the backend ( HS256 or RS256 ).
Make token expiration ( TTL , RTTL ) as short as possible.
Don't store sensitive data in the JWT payload, it can be decoded easily.
Avoid storing too much data. JWT is usually shared in headers and they have a size limit.

Access

Limit requests (Throttling) to avoid DDoS / brute-force attacks.

Use HTTPS on server side with TLS 1.2+ and secure ciphers to avoid MITM (Man in the Middle Attack).
Use HSTS header with SSL to avoid SSL Strip attacks.
Turn off directory listings.
For private APIs, allow access only from safelisted IPs/hosts.

Authorization

OAuth
Always validate redirect_uri server-side to allow only safelisted URLs.
Always try to exchange for code and not tokens (don't allow response_type=token ).
Use state parameter with a random hash to prevent CSRF on the OAuth authorization process.
Define the default scope, and validate scope parameters for each application.

Input

Use the proper HTTP method according to the operation: GET (read) , POST (create) , PUT/PATCH
(replace/update) , and DELETE (to delete a record) , and respond with 405 Method Not Allowed if the
requested method isn't appropriate for the requested resource.
Validate content-type on request Accept header (Content Negotiation) to allow only your supported
format (e.g., application/xml , application/json , etc.) and respond with 406 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 , or API keys ) in the URL, but
use standard Authorization header.
Use only server-side encryption.
Use an API Gateway service to enable caching, Rate Limit policies (e.g., Quota , Spike Arrest , or
Concurrent Rate Limit ) and deploy APIs resources dynamically.

Processing

Check if all the endpoints are protected behind authentication to avoid broken authentication process.
User own resource ID should be avoided. Use /me/orders instead of /user/654321/orders .
Don't auto-increment IDs. Use UUID instead.
If you are parsing XML data, make sure entity parsing is not enabled to avoid XXE (XML external entity
attack).
If you are parsing XML, YAML or any other language with anchors and refs, make sure entity expansion is
not enabled to avoid Billion Laughs/XML bomb via exponential entity expansion attack.
Use a CDN for file uploads.
If you are dealing with huge amount of data, use Workers and Queues to process as much as possible in
background and return response fast to avoid HTTP Blocking.
Do not forget to turn the DEBUG mode OFF.
Use non-executable stacks when available.

Output

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 return application/json , then your content-type
response is application/json .
Don't return sensitive data like credentials , passwords , or 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.).

CI & CD

Audit your design and implementation with unit/integration tests coverage.

Use a code review process and disregard self-approval.
Ensure that all components of your services are statically scanned by AV software before pushing to
production, including vendor libraries and other dependencies.
Continuously run security tests (static/dynamic analysis) on your code.
Check your dependencies (both software and OS) for known vulnerabilities.
Design a rollback solution for deployments.

Monitoring

Use centralized logins for all services and components.

Use agents to monitor all traffic, errors, requests, and responses.
Use alerts for SMS, Slack, Email, Telegram, Kibana, Cloudwatch, etc.
Ensure that you aren't logging any sensitive data like credit cards, passwords, PINs, etc.
Use an IDS and/or IPS system to monitor your API requests and instances.

See also:

yosriady/api-development-tools - A collection of useful resources for building RESTful HTTP+JSON APIs.

Contribution
Feel free to contribute by forking this repository, making some changes, and submitting pull requests. For any
questions drop us an email at [email protected] .

© 2023 GitHub, Inc. Terms Privacy Security Status Docs Contact GitHub Pricing API Training Blog About