Here’s a scenario we see far too often: a customer logs in, changes one number in a request — and sees someone else’s order. No hacking skills needed. Let’s talk about why that happens.
Why this matters to your business
APIs carry your most valuable data. One missing check can let any user read every customer’s records — the kind of incident that makes headlines.
A simple idea, often missed?
Every API request should answer one question: is this user allowed to access this specific record? When that check is missing, users can see or change data that belongs to someone else.
This is why broken object-level authorization sits at the top of the OWASP API Security Top 10.
Why scanners miss it?
Automated tools cannot know which data belongs to which user. Finding these issues needs testing with several accounts and roles, comparing what each one can reach.
How to prevent it?
Enforce ownership checks on the server for every request, prefer unpredictable identifiers, and add automated authorization tests to your build pipeline.
Where it usually goes wrong?
New endpoints added in a hurry, mobile-only APIs that “nobody else will find”, and old API versions that were never switched off are the most common places authorization checks are missing.
Building it into development?
Make authorization a shared library or middleware rather than something each developer writes by hand. Add automated tests that try to access another user’s data, and run them on every release.
From our work · technical details
How we handle this in API Security Testing
- Broken object-level authorization (BOLA)
- Mass assignment of privileged fields
- Excessive data in API responses
- Missing rate limiting
- JWT signature or algorithm weaknesses
- Old API versions still reachable
How our team helps
- 01Test every endpoint with multiple users and roles
- 02Map results to the OWASP API Security Top 10
- 03Explain each issue with clear remediation
- 04Retest after your fixes
- 05Build a role-by-endpoint access matrix
- 06Check older and mobile-only API versions
- 07Suggest automated tests your developers can keep
If your app has users, roles and data, this is the first thing we’d check.
— The CRIS InfoTech security team