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DYKWYBLSby Island Pitch
Do You Know What You Built Last Summer?!
You vibe coded it. You shipped it. Now let's find out if you actually know what's in there. No shame — just truth.
Do You Know What You Built Last Summer?!
You vibe coded it. You shipped it. Now let's find out if you actually know what's in there. No shame — just truth.
Knowledge Is Protection
Learn how to protect your API endpoints from common attacks and unauthorized access.
Your app has an API. Maybe it is the endpoints your frontend calls, maybe it is a public API your users consume, or maybe it is both. Either way, your API is a door into your application — and right now, it might be wide open. In 2024, GitHub detected 39 million secrets leaked across the platform: API keys, passwords, tokens. Threat actors harvest exposed secrets within minutes. A DOGE developer accidentally published a private xAI API key on GitHub in 2025. DeepSeek left an entire database publicly accessible without any authentication. Your API security is only as good as your weakest endpoint.
An API (Application Programming Interface) is how different parts of your software talk to each other, and how external clients interact with your backend. When your React frontend fetches user data, it is calling an API. When a mobile app submits a form, it is calling an API. When a webhook fires, it is calling an API.
API security is the practice of making sure only the right people can access the right data through those endpoints. It covers authentication (who is making the request?), authorization (are they allowed to do this?), input validation (is the data they sent safe?), and rate limiting (are they sending too many requests?).
The challenge with AI-generated APIs is that they usually work perfectly for the happy path — the intended use case with well-behaved inputs. But APIs live on the internet, and the internet is not well-behaved. Your API will receive malformed data, authentication bypass attempts, and high-volume automated requests. The question is whether it handles them gracefully or collapses.
API error responses also need to be accessible. When your API returns errors, they need to be programmatically parseable so client apps can render accessible error states — aria-live regions, proper focus management. APIs that return errors only as HTTP status codes without descriptive bodies make it much harder to build accessible UIs.
Your API is a door. Right now it might be a door without a lock, without a peephole, with a sign that says 'come on in.'
39 million secrets leaked on GitHub in 2024. Threat actors harvest them within minutes. Check your repos.
In May 2024, an API vulnerability at Dell exposed 49 million customer records. That same month, multiple critical API keys were found hardcoded directly into the Rabbit R1 device's source code — and they remained valid for over a month after the company was notified.
Over 15 million Trello user profiles were scraped via an API in January 2024 and listed for sale on a dark web forum. DeepSeek left a ClickHouse database publicly accessible without any authentication in January 2025 — over a million log entries including chat histories, API keys, and backend details were exposed to anyone who looked.
And over 30,000 Postman public workspaces were found leaking API keys, access tokens, and refresh tokens. Developers testing their APIs left the keys right there in the open.
GitHub detected 39 million secrets leaked across the platform in 2024. Thirty-nine million. Threat actors harvest exposed secrets within minutes of them being pushed. The Verizon DBIR 2025 confirms that credential abuse (22%) and vulnerability exploitation (20%) are the top two initial attack vectors.
These are not sophisticated nation-state attacks. They are basic hygiene failures. Exposed keys. Open databases. Unsecured endpoints. The attackers did not need to be clever. They just needed to look.
DeepSeek left their entire database open. No authentication. No password. Nothing. Just... open. In 2025.
Dell: 49M records. Trello: 15M profiles scraped. Postman: 30,000 workspaces leaking secrets. All API hygiene failures.
Unless an endpoint is explicitly public (like a health check or landing page data), it should verify that the request comes from an authenticated user. Check that your API middleware validates tokens or sessions before processing requests.
Being logged in should not give a user access to everything. Make sure your endpoints verify that the authenticated user is allowed to access the specific resource they are requesting. User A should not be able to see User B's data, even if both are logged in. This is called IDOR — Insecure Direct Object Reference — and it is shockingly common.
Search your repository for API keys, database URLs, and tokens. Check .env files, config files, and Postman workspaces. GitHub found 39 million leaked secrets in 2024. Use environment variables and secret managers, never hardcoded strings.
Never trust data that comes from a client. Validate that inputs match expected formats, lengths, and types. Sanitize data before using it in database queries or HTML output. The MOVEit breach — 93.3 million records, $9.93 billion — was a SQL injection. Input validation would have prevented it.
Your API should limit how many requests a single client can make in a given time window. This prevents abuse, protects your server resources, and mitigates brute-force attacks. Without it, someone can scrape your entire user base like they did with Trello.
Five checks. If you do nothing else today, search your codebase for hardcoded API keys. That one action could save you.
5 items. Secret scanning is the highest-urgency item. Automated tools can detect exposed credentials in seconds.
Your API is the most exposed part of your application. In 2024 alone, Dell lost 49 million records, Trello had 15 million profiles scraped, and 39 million secrets were leaked on GitHub. These are not exotic attacks — they are open doors, hardcoded keys, and missing authentication. You do not need to be a security researcher, but you do need to verify the basics. Part of how Island Pitch helps you Do Cool Things the Right Way!
The attackers did not need to be clever. They just needed to look. Do not be the open door they find.
Credential abuse: 22% of breaches. Vulnerability exploitation: 20%. Combined: 42% of all breaches are preventable with API hygiene.
How secure are your API endpoints? A DYKWYBLS comprehension check scans your codebase for common API security gaps and gives you a prioritized list of what to fix. Start with clarity, then build the fixes. Part of how Island Pitch helps you Do Cool Things the Right Way!
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