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Zero Trust Design: Secure API Architecture

Document updated on Apr 13, 2023

Real-world API deployments suffer daily attacks, even if you don’t notice them. It doesn’t matter if you have your infrastructure behind a delimited perimeter. Where there is a point of access, there is malicious activity.

The Zero Trust security is a software architecture design choice to deny by default unless specifically allowed. In zero trust, you verify all requests, regardless of origin, and prove you can trust them. KrakenD both evaluates and enforces rules.

The pillars of zero-trust

  1. Explicit declaration: Do not let pass parameters, headers, query strings, etc., unless you have explicitly declared it. Don’t assume any open defaults; write any behavior in the configuration.
  2. Principle of least authority (PoLA): Assign to your users only those privileges which are essential to perform its intended function. For example, a user account for creating deals in a sales department does not need to create invoices: hence, it has rights only to create deals, and any other privileges are blocked.
  3. Assume breach: Users’ credentials might be stolen and servers compromised. Minimize the attacking surface by segmenting access, work only with end-to-end encryption, and visualize activity in the dashboards.

Zero-trust assumptions

KrakenD assumes the following behaviors when serving an API:

  • All endpoints protected by tokens are strictly checked
    • No negotiation of algorithms possible
    • Do not trust keys from insecure protocols (HTTP)
    • No possibility of using expired tokens or incorrectly signed
    • Rules, audience, issuers, claims and business logic can be enforced
  • No endpoints exposed unless explicitly declared. It provides two immediate benefits:
    • No possible scan of the upstream services
    • No zombie APIs as all routes are typed. No possibility of leaving unnoticed endpoints behind
  • No header, query string, or cookie forwarding unless explicitly declared which ones:
    • Injections are limited because only what is explicitly declared is the attack surface
  • TLS defaults to TLS v1.3, the most secure, and rejects older versions
  • Multilayered rate limit (by service, by the user, by upstream)
  • CORS configuration denies API access from untrusted origins even when credentials are OK.
  • All software is designed with OWASP recommendations in mind to help mitigate risks. Including but not limited to the Top 10:
    • Broken Access Control
    • Cryptographic Failures
    • Injection
    • Insecure Design
    • Security Misconfiguration
    • Vulnerable and Outdated Components
    • Identification and Authentication Failures
    • Software and Data Integrity Failures
    • Security Logging and Monitoring Failures
    • Server-Side Request Forgery

Scarf

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