The first article in this series covered API keys and their importance in API security. When it comes to cybersecurity, you should prioritize understanding access control and its functionality. Access control refers to security protocols and commands that allow or restrict access to your system’s data or resources.
In terms of your API security, there are a few features integral to access control. These processes are referred to as authentication (authn) and authorization (authz), and public key.
Authentication in access control is the process of confirming the identity of a user or project that requests access to an API. On the other hand, authorization is the process of granting or restricting either users or project permissions within a given API.
For example, when you attend a concert or event. You’ll need to show your ticket to enter the venue (authentication). Once inside, you’ll receive a wristband that allows you to go to the bathroom, the concession, and sit in your designated seat but no other seats (authorization).
This article will provide an overview of the importance of authentication, authorization and access control, common challenges, and the management of public-key encryption for API security.
The Role of Authentication in Access Control
User authentication and access control must go hand in hand. There are millions of servers storing the sensitive data of millions of users worldwide. The authentication market is set to grow at a CAGR of 13.4% by 2025. Authentication-based access control ensures that the user of an app web-based API can’t access the information of others.
It is the first step to establishing a secure network for authorized users and protecting an API from bad actors. Let’s explore a few different types of authentication.
Username and Password
The method most of us are familiar with. When a user creates an account on an application, the credential information is sent over to the central server. The next time a user tries to request access to the API, they have to enter the same credentials. The application would grant the user access only if the credentials entered match the credentials in the central server.
Single Sign-On
In the Single Sign-On (SSO), authentication in access control is accomplished by sharing your credentials with other projects that also know your identity. For example, if a user attempts to sign onto a platform such as YouTube, they may be prompted to sign in using Google credentials rather than their YouTube credentials.
The user fills in their login credentials in Google and gets redirected back to YouTube. SSOs are handy for large enterprises with a vast number of applications and assets.
Biometric
Biometric authentication has been around for decades but is becoming increasingly common in applications targeted toward consumer end-users. This type of authentication utilizes the user’s biology, such as fingerprints, retinas, or facial patterns, to grant access to an application.
Authz Management
Authz is another word for authorization. After your API access control has granted a user or project access, it now must determine their permissions or restrictions within the application. Authorization is an extension of authentication (authn).
Authorization must be managed by best practices to ensure that the users have the proper level of access. Digital integrity and data privacy must be enforced while allowing users to fulfil their roles in an application.
You’ll want to consider factors when defining what authorization management means for your APIs. Keep these questions in mind:
- What are your enterprise’s security policy’s technical, ethical, and regulatory considerations?
- What is the structure of your application, and does it require different levels of authorization?
- How difficult is it for your admins to complete tasks within the application? You don’t want to implement authorization methods that can complicate workflow.
- How much granularity can be applied to permissions in different applications?
- What is the value of granting authorization to different roles?
OAuth 2.0
OAuth2.0 is an open standard authorization protocol that allows applications to access the resources of other web applications for a user. This protocol uses access tokens, pieces of data that enable permissions, to grant users the ability to access certain data. One of the most commonly used tokens is JSON Web Token (JWT).
The client must obtain its own credentials, client secret, and ID before accessing OAuth 2.0. The Authorization Server provides these, the server that receives the request for access tokens and issues them upon valid authentication.
Authz Challenges
Managing authorization is not without its challenges. Here are some of the glaring ones.
Implementation Length
An increasing number of companies are using multi-cloud environments for their APIs. If the company has different teams for differing facets of business, then there’s a good chance that multiple teams will create and implement APIs with differing protocols and processes.
The issue here becomes this—How do you know if each team utilizes best practices? There’s a high probability that the developers of each API will design them with their own best authorization practice rather than a streamlined approach. Other developers may not use any best practices. This is unacceptable for large enterprises containing a wealth of sensitive information.
Most companies concede the importance of authorization and access control. A common practice amongst enterprises is adopting a Center of Excellence (COE) to analyze all APIs and commit to a standard of following best practices.
However, this practice can prove problematic and unscalable, depending on the number of APIs an enterprise has. The COE team will eventually become overwhelmed with hundreds of APIs, unable to keep up because of a lengthy authorization review process.
IDP Diversity
Authorization data is commonly stored in IDPs. JWT tokens are then used to pass the data to backend APIs. Once again, this isn’t an efficient protocol for a multi-cloud environment due to the fragmentation that different authorization technologies enable.
Diversity makes it complicated for user authorization data to be duplicated and synced across different IDPs. Additionally, restrictions could limit which data can be stored in IDPs.
Broken Authentication
Naturally, authorization doesn’t only suffer from scaling inefficiencies. Bad actors seek the opportunity to take advantage of vulnerabilities. Broken authentication refers to the instance when a bad actor bypasses all of the authentication protocols of a user and gains that user’s same permissions. There are multiple types of broken authentication.
- Session Hijacking happens when a bad actor can continue to use the same session ID as an authorized user either by hijacking the session or by someone using the same session ID as someone who didn’t log off on a public device.
- Phishing is when bad actors send users links similar to an actual web application to deceive users into logging in with their legitimate credentials.
- Credential Stuffing occurs when hackers infiltrate databases or repositories and retrieve unencrypted passwords. These bad actors then use different techniques to test the validity of the passwords.
- Bad actors gain exposure through a Session ID URL. If the Session ID appears in the website URL, bad actors who have access to the URL through a network can impersonate the user.
- Password Spraying is a brute force attack where the hacker attempts to gain access to an account by guessing the password repeatedly in a short span.
The good news is that there are equally as many solutions despite the number of broken authentication methods.
- Two-Step authentication requires a user to confirm their identity on an additional trusted device after entering their login credentials on an application or web-based API.
- Set a limit on login attempts coming from the same IP address to prevent brute-force attacks.
- Discourage password spraying by encouraging best practices for password creation. Users should not have weak passwords. Passwords must be alphanumeric and diverse.
- You can create strict credential recovery that requires two-step authentication.
- Encrypt and hash passwords to discourage bad actors from brute force attacks and password theft.
Broken Access Control
The difference between broken access control and broken authentication is that broken access control refers to any instance when bad actors access, edit, delete or engage in actions, not within the framework of an API. Some vulnerabilities that lead to broken access control include:
- Vertical Privilege Escalation happens if a hacker gains the ability to access permissions and data to give themselves more permissions beyond their current role.
- Parameter-based access control occurs when a bad actor modifies values information in a hidden field, query string parameter, or cookie to give themselves permissions that they aren’t authorized to access
- Platform Misconfiguration is the result of negligence from a developer or system admin that doesn’t configure the security parameters of the API properly.
- Horizontal Privilege Escalation is when a hacker gains the ability to access permissions and data that allows them to spread their access across accounts with similar accessibility.
- Referrer-based access control is a vulnerability in web-based APIs that uses the HTTP referrer header to gain access control to sensitive data or permissions.
- Bad actors can exploit location-based access control by using geographical factors such as IP addresses to gain control over an API.
There are methods for protecting access control. You may want to employ some of these tactics for stronger authentication-based access control.
- Deny access to publicly accessible resources.
- Utilize a single application-wide platform to maintain access controls.
- Test and audit access controls frequently to ensure they are working as intended.
- Ensure developers specify the access allowed for each resource and deny what is not accessible when writing the code.
Public Key Infrastructure
Access control, authentication, and public key infrastructure are critical to the prolonged security of an API. A Public key is a cryptographic system of keys.
The public key is used to encrypt data intended for a recipient, and the private key is used to decrypt that data so that the recipient may interpret it. Public Key Infrastructure refers to encryption protocols and procedures to ensure the secure exchange of information between a client and server.
PKI can be broken up into three components.
1. Digital Certificate
A digital certificate is a file that proves the recipient of a public key is the intended recipient—a form of digital identification for users or projects.
2. Certificate Authority
A certificate authority is an entity that issues and validates digital certificates.
3. Registration Authority
A registration authority is an entity authorized by the certificate authority to verify digital certificate requests and grants the certificate authority the power to issue them.
Types of PKI Encryption
Public Keys encrypt data to protect it from hackers or vulnerabilities in the authorization. There are two primary encryption types that public keys utilize.
- Symmetric encryption uses the same key to encrypt and decrypt the data
- Asymmetric encryption uses two separate mathematically motivated keys to encrypt and decrypt data
Public Key Challenges
PKI can prove challenging for your infrastructure. Let’s quickly cover some of those challenges.
Certificate Lifespan
Changing certificates can be a hassle, so developers have a tendency to make the certificate lifespan too long. The longer the certificate lifespan and associated algorithm, the more vulnerable it will be to attacks over time. You can reduce the frequency of attacks by rotating your certificates.
Implementation Issues
Automated certificate automation is essential for companies to shield their APIs against attacks and unexpected lapses in network security. Manually certificate management has become increasingly difficult as the frequency of certification usage has increased. Automation will play a significant role as certification adoption outpaces developer management speed.
How The Auth API Can Help You
As mentioned earlier, enterprises are diversifying their APIs, which leads to diversification in authentication-based access control practices across multi-cloud networks. This ultimately leads to security issues and inefficiencies. The Auth API is a single system platform that offers scalable API Key Management and Auth Control, ensuring a streamlined approach to authorization.
Avoid the mistakes many developers make with certificate lifecycles. The Auth API removes the risk associated with your public key infrastructure with lifecycle management and hacker detection that alerts you via email at first sight of irregularities in your API security. Need your Auth control revolutionized? We can handle your API Key security needs. Learn more by requesting your demo today!
