Announcing API Abuse Detection


APIs are incredibly important. Throughout the 2000s, they formed the backbone of popular web services, helping the Internet become more useful and accessible. In the 2010s, APIs played a larger role in our lives, allowing personal devices to communicate with the digital world. Many of our daily activities, like using rideshare services and paying for lattes, are dependent on this form of modern communication. Now we are approaching a post-pandemic world in which APIs will be more important than ever.
Unfortunately, as any technology grows, so does its surface area for abuse. APIs are no exception. Competing rideshare services might monitor each other’s prices via API, spawning a price war and a waste of digital resources. Or a coffee drinker might manipulate an API for a latte discount. Some companies have thousands of APIs — including ones that they don’t even know about. Cloudflare can help solve these problems.
Today, we are announcing early access to API Discovery and API Abuse Detection.
Background
Before going further, it’s important to explain why we need a solution for APIs. Traditional security tools, including Rate Limiting and DDoS Protection, can be wonderfully useful. But these approaches were not built to act Continue reading





