API Security Gateway URL Key Rotation for Attack Mitigation

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Solution Overview

Problem

APIs are vulnerable to attacks due to their stateless nature, making it difficult to detect and prevent malicious requests from hackers, as each request stands alone without context, allowing for repeated experimentation to discover vulnerabilities.

Innovation Solution

Implementing an API security gateway that establishes a URL key rotation operation, generating and validating a local validation key for each API request, and modifying the request by removing part of the URL key to ensure only valid requests are processed, thereby making it difficult for attackers to mount repeated attacks.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Adaptability or versatility

If APIs use stateless HTTP protocol to simplify development and enable high volume scaling, then system scalability and ease of operation are improved, but vulnerability to hacker attacks increases

Engineering Contradiction:

ImprovescalabilityVSAvoidvulnerability to attacks

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

An API security gateway is introduced as an intermediary component between clients and the API server. The gateway validates URL keys in API requests before forwarding them to the server, acting as a mediator that filters malicious traffic while allowing legitimate requests to pass through. This resolves the contradiction by maintaining the stateless scalable architecture while adding security through the intermediary gateway.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

URL key validation is performed in advance by the security gateway before requests reach the API server. By validating the URL key beforehand and removing it from the request, the system prevents malicious requests from reaching the server, thus addressing the vulnerability issue while preserving the scalable stateless architecture.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

2Ease of operation

If APIs are designed to be stateless to align with HTTP protocol characteristics, then ease of operation and scalability are improved, but detection of malicious requests becomes more difficult

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveease of operationVSAvoiddetection of malicious requests

Core Design Contradiction:

Ease of operationVSDifficulty of detecting and measuring

Solution Approach 1:

The security gateway serves as an intermediary that adds detection capability to the stateless system. It validates URL keys and identifies malicious requests by checking against a whitelist of valid keys, enabling detection of attacks while the underlying API remains stateless and easy to operate.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The security gateway provides feedback by validating URL keys and determining whether requests are legitimate or malicious. This feedback mechanism enables detection of attacks without requiring the API itself to maintain state, thus resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and detection capability.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

3Object-affected harmful factors

If hackers send repeated transactions with random parameter variations to probe API endpoints, then the ability to discover vulnerabilities increases, but the volume of traffic increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvevulnerability discovery capabilityVSAvoidtraffic volume

Core Design Contradiction:

Object-affected harmful factorsVSQuantity of substance

Solution Approach 1:

The security gateway performs preliminary validation of URL keys before requests reach the API server. By checking the validity of URL keys in advance and blocking requests with invalid keys, the system prevents malicious probing traffic from reaching the server, thus reducing the effective traffic volume that could contribute to vulnerability discovery.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The URL key validation mechanism converts the potential harm of repeated traffic into a benefit by using the validation process to filter out malicious requests. Legitimate requests with valid URL keys are allowed through, while malicious probing requests with invalid or missing URL keys are blocked, thus transforming the traffic filtering process into a security advantage.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #22Blessing in disguise (Convert harm into benefit)

Data Source

PatentUS10581800B2Protecting computer servers from API attacks using coordinated varying of URL addresses in API requests

Publication Date: 2020.03.03 CA TECH INC

AI summary

An application programming interface (API) security gateway communicates with a client computer application to establish a URL key rotation operation. An API request is received from the client computer application that is directed to a computer server. The API request contains a URL address. The URL address is parsed to identify a URL key. A local validation key is generated based on the URL key rotation operation. The URL key is validated based on the local validation key to determine whether the URL key is valid. Based on determining that the URL key is valid, a modified API request is generated which contains the URL address with at least part of the URL key removed. The modified API request is provided to the computer server.