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What is API penetration testing? Definition and explanations

An API penetration test assesses the security of the interfaces a service exposes, independently of any graphical interface. It targets the API-specific risks listed by OWASP: broken object-level authorisation, excessive data exposure, missing rate limiting, forgotten endpoints. Many of these flaws stay invisible to a browser-centric test.

In one sentence

An API penetration test assesses a service's exposed interfaces, outside any graphical interface.

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