Boston-based security tools maker Rapid7 said on Thursday that the latest version of its AppSpider web application security testing solution can now automate the testing of APIs.
Part of Rapid7’s Threat Exposure Management platform, AppSpider is a Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) product that is now compatible with the Swagger framework and allows for fully automated API testing, the company said.
“The testing of APIs, which are increasingly a part of modern web applications and the Internet of Things (IoT), has been notoriously challenging for security professionals, as it previously required time consuming, manual testing efforts,” Rapid7 explained.
“Given the current and growing popularity of APIs in web applications, it’s critical to automate testing to enable security teams to test as much as possible to reduce the risk of breach,” said Lee Weiner, senior vice president of products and engineering at Rapid7.
“The ability for AppSpider, with its Universal Translator, to analyze Swagger files for security vulnerabilities gives our customers a more efficient alternative to manually testing their APIs and, ultimately, the ability to identify issues much more quickly, test more regularly, and save significant resources – up to hours per API,” Weiner added.
Swagger helps document APIs in a way that makes them readable by both humans and machines, which AppSpider leverages to translate the API into a format it can test.
In addition to the new API testing feature, AppSpider scans traditional formats, including HTML, and its Universal Translator can interpret the new technologies being used in today’s web and mobile applications (AJAX, GWT, REST, JSON, etc.).
Earlier this week, researchers discovered that the Application Program Interface (API) for Target’s mobile app for Andrid was easily accessible from the Internet and exposed user data. In February, a vulnerability in Delmarva Powe’s API could have allowed a malicious attacker to hijack the online accounts of customers.
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