Technical Guides 14 min read

API Penetration Testing per OWASP API Security Top 10: Hardening Application Interfaces in Switzerland

APIs transmit sensitive financial, personal, and operational data between mobile apps, customer portals, and internal databases. Without dedicated business logic testing, critical authorization flaws remain completely invisible to standard web vulnerability scanners.

Author: Areg Arakelyan
Current as of:
Audit standard: ISO/IEC 27001

API Security Essentials

  • BOLA Flaws (Broken Object Level Authorization): Enabling unauthorized users to access third-party customer accounts by simply modifying an ID parameter in the URL.
  • Blind Spot of Legacy Scanners: Standard web scanners cannot parse JSON schemas or navigate complex tokenized authentication flows.
  • Regulatory Liability: API leaks that expose customer databases trigger direct penal liability under the revised Swiss Data Protection Act (revFADP).
OWASP Reference Vulnerability Type Practical Risk
API1:2023 - BOLA Broken Object Level Authorization Unauthorized retrieval of patient records or invoices by changing record IDs.
API2:2023 - Broken Authentication Authentication Weaknesses Unverified JWT signatures or token reuse across distinct user sessions.
API4:2023 - Unrestricted Resource Consumption Missing Rate Limiting Susceptibility to denial-of-service outages or rapid scraping of entire datasets.
Areg Arakelyan

Areg Arakelyan

Lead Security Analyst, Suisse IT GmbH. Specialist in adversary simulation, attack surface assessment, and hardening of Swiss healthcare, local government, and enterprises.