How to Set Up Credentials to Send an Email Using the Gmail API

In this series of articles, I’ll walk you guys through the everything that I’m able to achieve using the Gmail API, starting from setting up the credentials, sending your first Email, replying to someone, sending a follow-up email, and finally setting up open email tracking using Google Analytics.

In this series, we will discuss below things:

1. Getting a Google developer account, setting up the credentials, and sending your first Email (Part 1).

2. Adding attachments, images, etc, formatting emails (Part 2).

3. Replying to someone and sending a followup on the same thread (Part 3).

4. Setting up Email Open tracking using Google Analytics (Part 4).

This part is centered around creating a service account. First, let’s break this down into stages…

#python #api #automation #gmail-api #towards-data-science

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A Simple Wrapper Around Amplify AppSync Simulator

This serverless plugin is a wrapper for amplify-appsync-simulator made for testing AppSync APIs built with serverless-appsync-plugin.

Install

npm install serverless-appsync-simulator
# or
yarn add serverless-appsync-simulator

Usage

This plugin relies on your serverless yml file and on the serverless-offline plugin.

plugins:
  - serverless-dynamodb-local # only if you need dynamodb resolvers and you don't have an external dynamodb
  - serverless-appsync-simulator
  - serverless-offline

Note: Order is important serverless-appsync-simulator must go before serverless-offline

To start the simulator, run the following command:

sls offline start

You should see in the logs something like:

...
Serverless: AppSync endpoint: http://localhost:20002/graphql
Serverless: GraphiQl: http://localhost:20002
...

Configuration

Put options under custom.appsync-simulator in your serverless.yml file

| option | default | description | | ------------------------ | -------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------- | | apiKey | 0123456789 | When using API_KEY as authentication type, the key to authenticate to the endpoint. | | port | 20002 | AppSync operations port; if using multiple APIs, the value of this option will be used as a starting point, and each other API will have a port of lastPort + 10 (e.g. 20002, 20012, 20022, etc.) | | wsPort | 20003 | AppSync subscriptions port; if using multiple APIs, the value of this option will be used as a starting point, and each other API will have a port of lastPort + 10 (e.g. 20003, 20013, 20023, etc.) | | location | . (base directory) | Location of the lambda functions handlers. | | refMap | {} | A mapping of resource resolutions for the Ref function | | getAttMap | {} | A mapping of resource resolutions for the GetAtt function | | importValueMap | {} | A mapping of resource resolutions for the ImportValue function | | functions | {} | A mapping of external functions for providing invoke url for external fucntions | | dynamoDb.endpoint | http://localhost:8000 | Dynamodb endpoint. Specify it if you're not using serverless-dynamodb-local. Otherwise, port is taken from dynamodb-local conf | | dynamoDb.region | localhost | Dynamodb region. Specify it if you're connecting to a remote Dynamodb intance. | | dynamoDb.accessKeyId | DEFAULT_ACCESS_KEY | AWS Access Key ID to access DynamoDB | | dynamoDb.secretAccessKey | DEFAULT_SECRET | AWS Secret Key to access DynamoDB | | dynamoDb.sessionToken | DEFAULT_ACCESS_TOKEEN | AWS Session Token to access DynamoDB, only if you have temporary security credentials configured on AWS | | dynamoDb.* | | You can add every configuration accepted by DynamoDB SDK | | rds.dbName | | Name of the database | | rds.dbHost | | Database host | | rds.dbDialect | | Database dialect. Possible values (mysql | postgres) | | rds.dbUsername | | Database username | | rds.dbPassword | | Database password | | rds.dbPort | | Database port | | watch | - *.graphql
- *.vtl | Array of glob patterns to watch for hot-reloading. |

Example:

custom:
  appsync-simulator:
    location: '.webpack/service' # use webpack build directory
    dynamoDb:
      endpoint: 'http://my-custom-dynamo:8000'

Hot-reloading

By default, the simulator will hot-relad when changes to *.graphql or *.vtl files are detected. Changes to *.yml files are not supported (yet? - this is a Serverless Framework limitation). You will need to restart the simulator each time you change yml files.

Hot-reloading relies on watchman. Make sure it is installed on your system.

You can change the files being watched with the watch option, which is then passed to watchman as the match expression.

e.g.

custom:
  appsync-simulator:
    watch:
      - ["match", "handlers/**/*.vtl", "wholename"] # => array is interpreted as the literal match expression
      - "*.graphql"                                 # => string like this is equivalent to `["match", "*.graphql"]`

Or you can opt-out by leaving an empty array or set the option to false

Note: Functions should not require hot-reloading, unless you are using a transpiler or a bundler (such as webpack, babel or typescript), un which case you should delegate hot-reloading to that instead.

Resource CloudFormation functions resolution

This plugin supports some resources resolution from the Ref, Fn::GetAtt and Fn::ImportValue functions in your yaml file. It also supports some other Cfn functions such as Fn::Join, Fb::Sub, etc.

Note: Under the hood, this features relies on the cfn-resolver-lib package. For more info on supported cfn functions, refer to the documentation

Basic usage

You can reference resources in your functions' environment variables (that will be accessible from your lambda functions) or datasource definitions. The plugin will automatically resolve them for you.

provider:
  environment:
    BUCKET_NAME:
      Ref: MyBucket # resolves to `my-bucket-name`

resources:
  Resources:
    MyDbTable:
      Type: AWS::DynamoDB::Table
      Properties:
        TableName: myTable
      ...
    MyBucket:
      Type: AWS::S3::Bucket
      Properties:
        BucketName: my-bucket-name
    ...

# in your appsync config
dataSources:
  - type: AMAZON_DYNAMODB
    name: dynamosource
    config:
      tableName:
        Ref: MyDbTable # resolves to `myTable`

Override (or mock) values

Sometimes, some references cannot be resolved, as they come from an Output from Cloudformation; or you might want to use mocked values in your local environment.

In those cases, you can define (or override) those values using the refMap, getAttMap and importValueMap options.

• refMap takes a mapping of resource name to value pairs
• getAttMap takes a mapping of resource name to attribute/values pairs
• importValueMap takes a mapping of import name to values pairs

Example:

custom:
  appsync-simulator:
    refMap:
      # Override `MyDbTable` resolution from the previous example.
      MyDbTable: 'mock-myTable'
    getAttMap:
      # define ElasticSearchInstance DomainName
      ElasticSearchInstance:
        DomainEndpoint: 'localhost:9200'
    importValueMap:
      other-service-api-url: 'https://other.api.url.com/graphql'

# in your appsync config
dataSources:
  - type: AMAZON_ELASTICSEARCH
    name: elasticsource
    config:
      # endpoint resolves as 'http://localhost:9200'
      endpoint:
        Fn::Join:
          - ''
          - - https://
            - Fn::GetAtt:
                - ElasticSearchInstance
                - DomainEndpoint

Key-value mock notation

In some special cases you will need to use key-value mock nottation. Good example can be case when you need to include serverless stage value (${self:provider.stage}) in the import name.

This notation can be used with all mocks - refMap, getAttMap and importValueMap

provider:
  environment:
    FINISH_ACTIVITY_FUNCTION_ARN:
      Fn::ImportValue: other-service-api-${self:provider.stage}-url

custom:
  serverless-appsync-simulator:
    importValueMap:
      - key: other-service-api-${self:provider.stage}-url
        value: 'https://other.api.url.com/graphql'

Limitations

This plugin only tries to resolve the following parts of the yml tree:

• provider.environment
• functions[*].environment
• custom.appSync

If you have the need of resolving others, feel free to open an issue and explain your use case.

For now, the supported resources to be automatically resovled by Ref: are:

• DynamoDb tables
• S3 Buckets

Feel free to open a PR or an issue to extend them as well.

External functions

When a function is not defined withing the current serverless file you can still call it by providing an invoke url which should point to a REST method. Make sure you specify "get" or "post" for the method. Default is "get", but you probably want "post".

custom:
  appsync-simulator:
    functions:
      addUser:
        url: http://localhost:3016/2015-03-31/functions/addUser/invocations
        method: post
      addPost:
        url: https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts
        method: post

Supported Resolver types

This plugin supports resolvers implemented by amplify-appsync-simulator, as well as custom resolvers.

From Aws Amplify:

• NONE
• AWS_LAMBDA
• AMAZON_DYNAMODB
• PIPELINE

Implemented by this plugin

• AMAZON_ELASTIC_SEARCH
• HTTP
• RELATIONAL_DATABASE

Relational Database

Sample VTL for a create mutation

#set( $cols = [] )
#set( $vals = [] )
#foreach( $entry in $ctx.args.input.keySet() )
  #set( $regex = "([a-z])([A-Z]+)")
  #set( $replacement = "$1_$2")
  #set( $toSnake = $entry.replaceAll($regex, $replacement).toLowerCase() )
  #set( $discard = $cols.add("$toSnake") )
  #if( $util.isBoolean($ctx.args.input[$entry]) )
      #if( $ctx.args.input[$entry] )
        #set( $discard = $vals.add("1") )
      #else
        #set( $discard = $vals.add("0") )
      #end
  #else
      #set( $discard = $vals.add("'$ctx.args.input[$entry]'") )
  #end
#end
#set( $valStr = $vals.toString().replace("[","(").replace("]",")") )
#set( $colStr = $cols.toString().replace("[","(").replace("]",")") )
#if ( $valStr.substring(0, 1) != '(' )
  #set( $valStr = "($valStr)" )
#end
#if ( $colStr.substring(0, 1) != '(' )
  #set( $colStr = "($colStr)" )
#end
{
  "version": "2018-05-29",
  "statements":   ["INSERT INTO <name-of-table> $colStr VALUES $valStr", "SELECT * FROM    <name-of-table> ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 1"]
}

Sample VTL for an update mutation

#set( $update = "" )
#set( $equals = "=" )
#foreach( $entry in $ctx.args.input.keySet() )
  #set( $cur = $ctx.args.input[$entry] )
  #set( $regex = "([a-z])([A-Z]+)")
  #set( $replacement = "$1_$2")
  #set( $toSnake = $entry.replaceAll($regex, $replacement).toLowerCase() )
  #if( $util.isBoolean($cur) )
      #if( $cur )
        #set ( $cur = "1" )
      #else
        #set ( $cur = "0" )
      #end
  #end
  #if ( $util.isNullOrEmpty($update) )
      #set($update = "$toSnake$equals'$cur'" )
  #else
      #set($update = "$update,$toSnake$equals'$cur'" )
  #end
#end
{
  "version": "2018-05-29",
  "statements":   ["UPDATE <name-of-table> SET $update WHERE id=$ctx.args.input.id", "SELECT * FROM <name-of-table> WHERE id=$ctx.args.input.id"]
}

Sample resolver for delete mutation

{
  "version": "2018-05-29",
  "statements":   ["UPDATE <name-of-table> set deleted_at=NOW() WHERE id=$ctx.args.id", "SELECT * FROM <name-of-table> WHERE id=$ctx.args.id"]
}

Sample mutation response VTL with support for handling AWSDateTime

#set ( $index = -1)
#set ( $result = $util.parseJson($ctx.result) )
#set ( $meta = $result.sqlStatementResults[1].columnMetadata)
#foreach ($column in $meta)
    #set ($index = $index + 1)
    #if ( $column["typeName"] == "timestamptz" )
        #set ($time = $result["sqlStatementResults"][1]["records"][0][$index]["stringValue"] )
        #set ( $nowEpochMillis = $util.time.parseFormattedToEpochMilliSeconds("$time.substring(0,19)+0000", "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssZ") )
        #set ( $isoDateTime = $util.time.epochMilliSecondsToISO8601($nowEpochMillis) )
        $util.qr( $result["sqlStatementResults"][1]["records"][0][$index].put("stringValue", "$isoDateTime") )
    #end
#end
#set ( $res = $util.parseJson($util.rds.toJsonString($util.toJson($result)))[1][0] )
#set ( $response = {} )
#foreach($mapKey in $res.keySet())
    #set ( $s = $mapKey.split("_") )
    #set ( $camelCase="" )
    #set ( $isFirst=true )
    #foreach($entry in $s)
        #if ( $isFirst )
          #set ( $first = $entry.substring(0,1) )
        #else
          #set ( $first = $entry.substring(0,1).toUpperCase() )
        #end
        #set ( $isFirst=false )
        #set ( $stringLength = $entry.length() )
        #set ( $remaining = $entry.substring(1, $stringLength) )
        #set ( $camelCase = "$camelCase$first$remaining" )
    #end
    $util.qr( $response.put("$camelCase", $res[$mapKey]) )
#end
$utils.toJson($response)

Using Variable Map

Variable map support is limited and does not differentiate numbers and strings data types, please inject them directly if needed.

Will be escaped properly: null, true, and false values.

{
  "version": "2018-05-29",
  "statements":   [
    "UPDATE <name-of-table> set deleted_at=NOW() WHERE id=:ID",
    "SELECT * FROM <name-of-table> WHERE id=:ID and unix_timestamp > $ctx.args.newerThan"
  ],
  variableMap: {
    ":ID": $ctx.args.id,
##    ":TIMESTAMP": $ctx.args.newerThan -- This will be handled as a string!!!
  }
}

Requires

• serverless framework
• serverless-appsync-plugin
• serverless-offline
• serverless-dynamodb-local (when using dynamodb resolvers only)
• watchman (if Hot-reloading is desactivated it is not required)

Author: Serverless-appsync
Source Code: https://github.com/serverless-appsync/serverless-appsync-simulator 
License: MIT License

#serverless #sync #graphql 

How to Validate an Email Address in Java

Email is one of the most universal tools for sharing and receiving information across the globe, with users able to connect with others online with almost no compatibility or access issues. Using this tool, information can be instantly and securely sent to partners on the other side of the world, and personal information can be verified without divulging sensitive data about a user.

Along with this widespread use, however, comes key security measures that must take place in order to ensure the safety of your organization and data. This is particularly the case when receiving email information from previously unknown sources. These risks can include phishing attempts, malware, and other threats that can cause a negative impact to your business. Furthermore, when receiving an email address via account forms and user sign up information, you need to check that the information you are given is not only correct and real, but also that it does not lead to any malicious sources that could harm your organizational security.

The following APIs will allow you to instantly verify and validate an input email address without sending any kind of notification to the email user. This will help protect your organization in the event of any threats. The goal of this tutorial is to provide you with the tools to protect your organization’s information while providing a way to verify new accounts and user information.

This will be done through three separate functions. The first will analyze the validity of an email address’ syntax. The second will check for the address’ servers, and the third performs a full email address validation including returning the results for the previous two functions.

#java #api #java api #api access keys #api tutorial #email verification #email validation #java api tutorials #java apis #api tutorials

Build vs. Buy Behavioral Email Platform for API Product Companies

Behavioral email is automated and targeted messages sent to customers based on their actions or behavior. By triggering on how your customers interact with your website or product, you’re able to send email whose content is actually aligned with what they’re doing, and will therefore be far more likely to resonate.

API companies are uniquely positioned to take advantage of behavioral emails; If monitoring and analytics is done right, then insights into what’s going on deep within the platform can be surfaced; And insightful, or even prescient, communiqués can be made.

Common capabilities of behavioral email in API platform companies include helping developers speed API integration & try out new product features, and keeping customers informed on subscription & platform issues.

Off-the-shelf behavioral email solutions can provide all of the functionality as outlined in this article. But in this post we’re going to break down what it would take, technically, to build your own behavioral email solution.

What’s required to build your own behavioral email solution?

A behavioral email product consists of at least three parts:

1. A methodology to get monitoring data from an API

2. A way to define rules and validate the monitoring data

3. A process to send specific emails to users when a rule is met

Acquisition of monitoring data from an API

Depending on how confident you feel, you could build a whole monitoring solution from scratch, or you could employ an off-the-shelf open-source system such as Prometheus.

Prometheus is a monitoring solution for microservices. By including a Prometheus client in your application, it can be called when you want to record a metric. The Prometheus server will then poll the data source at regular intervals and persist the result. The Prometheus docs have a setup guide to help with installation.

Prometheus clients come with default metrics configured out-of-the-box, so you don’t have to manually set up basic stuff like CPU or memory monitoring.

For a Node.js/Express.js based API, you can install the Node.js client for Prometheus via NPM and configuration only takes a few lines of code:

const prometheus = require('prom-client');

const register = new prometheus.Registry();

prometheus.collectDefaultMetrics({ register });

The default metrics are fundamental and not API related, so you would have to set up more complex metrics yourself.

The code for a very simple API metric might look like:

const activeRequests = new client.Gauge({

 name: 'activeRequests'

});

registry.registerMetric(activeRequests);

api.use((req, res, next) => {

 activeRequests.inc();

 res.on('close', () => activeRequests.dec());

 next();

});

Prometheus only covers three out of the top 15 most important API metrics you should be tracking, the rest have to be defined with custom code.

#api #email marketing #api integration #analytics platforms #api monitoring #monitoring and alerting #api providers #email api #email solution #user behavior analytics

APIs for Beginners - How to use an API (Full Course / Tutorial)

What is an API? Learn all about APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) in this full tutorial for beginners. You will learn what APIs do, why APIs exist, and the many benefits of APIs. APIs are used all the time in programming and web development so it is important to understand how to use them.

You will also get hands-on experience with a few popular web APIs. As long as you know the absolute basics of coding and the web, you’ll have no problem following along.
⭐️ Unit 1 - What is an API
⌨️ Video 1 - Welcome (0:00:00)
⌨️ Video 2 - Defining Interface (0:03:57)
⌨️ Video 3 - Defining API (0:07:51)
⌨️ Video 4 - Remote APIs (0:12:55)
⌨️ Video 5 - How the web works (0:17:04)
⌨️ Video 6 - RESTful API Constraint Scavenger Hunt (0:22:00)

⭐️ Unit 2 - Exploring APIs
⌨️ Video 1 - Exploring an API online (0:27:36)
⌨️ Video 2 - Using an API from the command line (0:44:30)
⌨️ Video 3 - Using Postman to explore APIs (0:53:56)
⌨️ Video 4 - Please please Mr. Postman (1:03:33)
⌨️ Video 5 - Using Helper Libraries (JavaScript) (1:14:41)
⌨️ Video 6 - Using Helper Libraries (Python) (1:24:40)

⭐️ Unit 3 - Using APIs
⌨️ Video 1 - Introducing the project (1:34:18)
⌨️ Video 2 - Flask app (1:36:07)
⌨️ Video 3 - Dealing with API Limits (1:50:00)
⌨️ Video 4 - JavaScript Single Page Application (1:54:27)
⌨️ Video 5 - Moar JavaScript and Recap (2:07:53)
⌨️ Video 6 - Review (2:18:03)
📺 The video in this post was made by freeCodeCamp.org
The origin of the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZvSYJDk-us&list=PLWKjhJtqVAblfum5WiQblKPwIbqYXkDoC&index=5
🔥 If you’re a beginner. I believe the article below will be useful to you ☞ What You Should Know Before Investing in Cryptocurrency - For Beginner
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Thanks for visiting and watching! Please don’t forget to leave a like, comment and share!

#apis #apis for beginners #how to use an api #apis for beginners - how to use an api #application programming interfaces #learn all about apis

Top 10 API Security Threats Every API Team Should Know

As more and more data is exposed via APIs either as API-first companies or for the explosion of single page apps/JAMStack, API security can no longer be an afterthought. The hard part about APIs is that it provides direct access to large amounts of data while bypassing browser precautions. Instead of worrying about SQL injection and XSS issues, you should be concerned about the bad actor who was able to paginate through all your customer records and their data.

Typical prevention mechanisms like Captchas and browser fingerprinting won’t work since APIs by design need to handle a very large number of API accesses even by a single customer. So where do you start? The first thing is to put yourself in the shoes of a hacker and then instrument your APIs to detect and block common attacks along with unknown unknowns for zero-day exploits. Some of these are on the OWASP Security API list, but not all.

Insecure pagination and resource limits

Most APIs provide access to resources that are lists of entities such as /users or /widgets. A client such as a browser would typically filter and paginate through this list to limit the number items returned to a client like so:

First Call: GET /items?skip=0&take=10 
Second Call: GET /items?skip=10&take=10

However, if that entity has any PII or other information, then a hacker could scrape that endpoint to get a dump of all entities in your database. This could be most dangerous if those entities accidently exposed PII or other sensitive information, but could also be dangerous in providing competitors or others with adoption and usage stats for your business or provide scammers with a way to get large email lists. See how Venmo data was scraped

A naive protection mechanism would be to check the take count and throw an error if greater than 100 or 1000. The problem with this is two-fold:

1. For data APIs, legitimate customers may need to fetch and sync a large number of records such as via cron jobs. Artificially small pagination limits can force your API to be very chatty decreasing overall throughput. Max limits are to ensure memory and scalability requirements are met (and prevent certain DDoS attacks), not to guarantee security.
2. This offers zero protection to a hacker that writes a simple script that sleeps a random delay between repeated accesses.

skip = 0
while True:    response = requests.post('https://api.acmeinc.com/widgets?take=10&skip=' + skip),                      headers={'Authorization': 'Bearer' + ' ' + sys.argv[1]})    print("Fetched 10 items")    sleep(randint(100,1000))    skip += 10

How to secure against pagination attacks

To secure against pagination attacks, you should track how many items of a single resource are accessed within a certain time period for each user or API key rather than just at the request level. By tracking API resource access at the user level, you can block a user or API key once they hit a threshold such as “touched 1,000,000 items in a one hour period”. This is dependent on your API use case and can even be dependent on their subscription with you. Like a Captcha, this can slow down the speed that a hacker can exploit your API, like a Captcha if they have to create a new user account manually to create a new API key.

Insecure API key generation

Most APIs are protected by some sort of API key or JWT (JSON Web Token). This provides a natural way to track and protect your API as API security tools can detect abnormal API behavior and block access to an API key automatically. However, hackers will want to outsmart these mechanisms by generating and using a large pool of API keys from a large number of users just like a web hacker would use a large pool of IP addresses to circumvent DDoS protection.

How to secure against API key pools

The easiest way to secure against these types of attacks is by requiring a human to sign up for your service and generate API keys. Bot traffic can be prevented with things like Captcha and 2-Factor Authentication. Unless there is a legitimate business case, new users who sign up for your service should not have the ability to generate API keys programmatically. Instead, only trusted customers should have the ability to generate API keys programmatically. Go one step further and ensure any anomaly detection for abnormal behavior is done at the user and account level, not just for each API key.

Accidental key exposure

APIs are used in a way that increases the probability credentials are leaked:

1. APIs are expected to be accessed over indefinite time periods, which increases the probability that a hacker obtains a valid API key that’s not expired. You save that API key in a server environment variable and forget about it. This is a drastic contrast to a user logging into an interactive website where the session expires after a short duration.
2. The consumer of an API has direct access to the credentials such as when debugging via Postman or CURL. It only takes a single developer to accidently copy/pastes the CURL command containing the API key into a public forum like in GitHub Issues or Stack Overflow.
3. API keys are usually bearer tokens without requiring any other identifying information. APIs cannot leverage things like one-time use tokens or 2-factor authentication.

If a key is exposed due to user error, one may think you as the API provider has any blame. However, security is all about reducing surface area and risk. Treat your customer data as if it’s your own and help them by adding guards that prevent accidental key exposure.

How to prevent accidental key exposure

The easiest way to prevent key exposure is by leveraging two tokens rather than one. A refresh token is stored as an environment variable and can only be used to generate short lived access tokens. Unlike the refresh token, these short lived tokens can access the resources, but are time limited such as in hours or days.

The customer will store the refresh token with other API keys. Then your SDK will generate access tokens on SDK init or when the last access token expires. If a CURL command gets pasted into a GitHub issue, then a hacker would need to use it within hours reducing the attack vector (unless it was the actual refresh token which is low probability)

Exposure to DDoS attacks

APIs open up entirely new business models where customers can access your API platform programmatically. However, this can make DDoS protection tricky. Most DDoS protection is designed to absorb and reject a large number of requests from bad actors during DDoS attacks but still need to let the good ones through. This requires fingerprinting the HTTP requests to check against what looks like bot traffic. This is much harder for API products as all traffic looks like bot traffic and is not coming from a browser where things like cookies are present.

Stopping DDoS attacks

The magical part about APIs is almost every access requires an API Key. If a request doesn’t have an API key, you can automatically reject it which is lightweight on your servers (Ensure authentication is short circuited very early before later middleware like request JSON parsing). So then how do you handle authenticated requests? The easiest is to leverage rate limit counters for each API key such as to handle X requests per minute and reject those above the threshold with a 429 HTTP response. There are a variety of algorithms to do this such as leaky bucket and fixed window counters.

Incorrect server security

APIs are no different than web servers when it comes to good server hygiene. Data can be leaked due to misconfigured SSL certificate or allowing non-HTTPS traffic. For modern applications, there is very little reason to accept non-HTTPS requests, but a customer could mistakenly issue a non HTTP request from their application or CURL exposing the API key. APIs do not have the protection of a browser so things like HSTS or redirect to HTTPS offer no protection.

How to ensure proper SSL

Test your SSL implementation over at Qualys SSL Test or similar tool. You should also block all non-HTTP requests which can be done within your load balancer. You should also remove any HTTP headers scrub any error messages that leak implementation details. If your API is used only by your own apps or can only be accessed server-side, then review Authoritative guide to Cross-Origin Resource Sharing for REST APIs

Incorrect caching headers

APIs provide access to dynamic data that’s scoped to each API key. Any caching implementation should have the ability to scope to an API key to prevent cross-pollution. Even if you don’t cache anything in your infrastructure, you could expose your customers to security holes. If a customer with a proxy server was using multiple API keys such as one for development and one for production, then they could see cross-pollinated data.

#api management #api security #api best practices #api providers #security analytics #api management policies #api access tokens #api access #api security risks #api access keys