How to Secure REST APIs Using a Free Self-Hosted Web Application Firewall

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REST APIs face distinct security threats compared to traditional web forms, including JSON injection, broken object-level authorization, JWT manipulation, and rate abuse attacks. SafeLine, a free and open-source Web Application Firewall, can be self-hosted and deployed in front of an API gateway to address these vulnerabilities. The tool offers semantic detection of injection attempts across JSON bodies, GraphQL queries, and URL parameters, claiming a 71.65% detection rate with roughly 1ms of added latency per request. Administrators can configure custom rate-limiting rules per endpoint and per API key, with stricter thresholds for sensitive routes such as authentication endpoints. Whitelist rules allow health-check and webhook endpoints to bypass full inspection while keeping all other traffic under scrutiny.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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