Virtual Patching: A Proactive Approach To API Security
Security Boulevard, Thursday, October 3rd, 2024
In the API-driven world of modern enterprises, security vulnerabilities such as Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA) represent one of the more insidious threats.
These weaknesses are often exploited by attackers through bot-driven automation and can lead to data breaches and privacy violations. It's not always convenient or even possible to immediately remediate the problem through code fixes, which must be implemented, tested, and then moved to production.
A popular alternative that is effective and quick to implement is virtual patching, which protects vulnerable API endpoints without the need for immediate code changes. In a recent incident, our team at Cequence Security successfully detected and mitigated a major BOLA vulnerability using virtual patching.
Here's a detailed look at what happened, how it was detected, and how virtual patching played a pivotal role in remediation.