OWASP Secure Coding Cheat Sheets: REST Security Cheat Sheet

# REST Security Cheat Sheet

## Introduction

[REST](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REST) (or **RE**presentational **S**tate **T**ransfer) is an architectural style first described in [Roy Fielding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Fielding)'s Ph.D. dissertation on [Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures](https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm).

It evolved as Fielding wrote the HTTP/1.1 and URI specs and has been proven to be well-suited for developing distributed hypermedia applications. While REST is more widely applicable, it is most commonly used within the context of communicating with services via HTTP.

The key abstraction of information in REST is a resource. A REST API resource is identified by a URI, usually a HTTP URL. REST components use connectors to perform actions on a resource by using a representation to capture the current or intended state of the resource and transferring that representation.

The primary connector types are client and server, secondary connectors include cache, resolver and tunnel.

REST APIs are stateless. Stateful APIs do not adhere to the REST architectural style. State in the REST acronym refers to the state of the resource which the API accesses, not the state of a session within which the API is called. While there may be good reasons for building a stateful API, it is important to realize that managing sessions is complex and difficult to do securely.

Stateful services are out of scope of this Cheat Sheet: *Passing state from client to backend, while making the service technically stateless, is an anti-pattern that should also be avoided as it is prone to replay and impersonation attacks.*

In order to implement flows with REST APIs, resources are typically created, read, updated and deleted. For example, an ecommerce site may offer methods to create an empty shopping cart, to add items to the cart and to check out the cart. Each of these REST calls is stateless and the endpoint should check whether the caller is authorized to perform the requested operation.

Another key feature of REST applications is the use of standard HTTP verbs and error codes in the pursuit or removing unnecessary variation among different services.

Another key feature of REST applications is the use of [HATEOAS or Hypermedia As The Engine of Application State](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS). This provides REST applications a self-documenting nature making it easier for developers to interact with a REST service without prior knowledge.

## HTTPS

Secure REST services must only provide HTTPS endpoints. This protects authentication credentials in transit, for example passwords, API keys or JSON Web Tokens. It also allows clients to authenticate the service and guarantees integrity of the transmitted data.

See the [Transport Layer Security Cheat Sheet](Transport_Layer_Security_Cheat_Sheet.md) for additional information.

Consider the use of mutually authenticated client-side certificates to provide additional protection for highly privileged web services.

## Access Control

Non-public REST services must perform access control at each API endpoint. Web services in monolithic applications implement this by means of user authentication, authorization logic and session management. This has several drawbacks for modern architectures which compose multiple microservices following the RESTful style.

- in order to minimize latency and reduce coupling between services, the access control decision should be taken locally by REST endpoints
- user authentication should be centralised in a Identity Provider (IdP), which issues access tokens

## JWT

There seems to be a convergence towards using [JSON Web Tokens](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7519) (JWT) as the format for security tokens. JWTs are JSON data structures containing a set of claims that can be used for access control decisions. A cryptographic signature or message authentication code (MAC) can be used to protect the integrity of the JWT.

- Ensure JWTs are integrity protected by either a signature or a MAC. Do not allow the unsecured JWTs: `{"alg":"none"}`.
    - See [here](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7519#section-6.1)
- In general, signatures should be preferred over MACs for integrity protection of JWTs.

If MACs are used for integrity protection, every service that is able to validate JWTs can also create new JWTs using the same key. This means that all services using the same key have to mutually trust each other. Another consequence of this is that a compromise of any service also compromises all other services sharing the same key. See [here](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7515#section-10.5) for additional information.

The relying party or token consumer validates a JWT by verifying its integrity and claims contained.

- A relying party must verify the integrity of the JWT based on its own configuration or hard-coded logic. It must not rely on the information of the JWT header to select the verification algorithm. See [here](https://www.chosenplaintext.ca/2015/03/31/jwt-algorithm-confusion.html) and [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW5pS4e_MX8>)

Some claims have been standardized and should be present in JWT used for access controls. At least the following of the standard claims should be verified:

- `iss` or issuer - is this a trusted issuer? Is it the expected owner of the signing key?
- `aud` or audience - is the relying party in the target audience for this JWT?
- `exp` or expiration time - is the current time before the end of the validity period of this token?
- `nbf` or not before time - is the current time after the start of the validity period of this token?

As JWTs contain details of the authenticated entity (user etc.) a disconnect can occur between the JWT and the current state of the users session, for example, if the session is terminated earlier than the expiration time due to an explicit logout or an idle timeout. When an explicit session termination event occurs, a digest or hash of any associated JWTs should be submitted to a denylist on the API which will invalidate that JWT for any requests until the expiration of the token. See the [JSON_Web_Token_for_Java_Cheat_Sheet](JSON_Web_Token_for_Java_Cheat_Sheet.md#token-explicit-revocation-by-the-user) for further details.

## API Keys

Public REST services without access control run the risk of being farmed leading to excessive bills for bandwidth or compute cycles. API keys can be used to mitigate this risk. They are also often used by organisation to monetize APIs; instead of blocking high-frequency calls, clients are given access in accordance to a purchased access plan.

API keys can reduce the impact of denial-of-service attacks. However, when they are issued to third-party clients, they are relatively easy to compromise.

- Require API keys for every request to the protected endpoint.
- Return `429 Too Many Requests` HTTP response code if requ