Your API attack surface is larger and more exposed than you realize.

In today’s complex, cloud-native environment, APIs are deployed at an astonishing rate. While this rapid pace fuels innovation, it also creates a significant visibility gap. The APIs you are aware of and manage are only the tip of the iceberg. Your actual risk exists beneath the surface, in the undocumented, unmanaged, and forgotten APIs that traditional security tools completely overlook.

These are the “unknown unknowns”—the shadow, rogue, and zombie APIs that attackers actively seek out. The crucial question isn’t whether you have them, but how many you have and what they are revealing.

The Illusion of Visibility

Many organizations believe their current security measures provide a comprehensive overview. While Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) and API Gateways are crucial, they only guard the traffic they monitor. They cannot detect abandoned development servers or overlooked API endpoints still connected to live data. These unmanaged assets represent your main blind spots.

To effectively protect your organization, you must go beyond passive monitoring and think like an attacker. Proactively searching for and identifying your vulnerabilities is essential.

Introducing Salt Surface: An Attacker’s-Eye View of Your API Risk

We are excited to introduce Salt Surface, a new feature within the Salt Security API Protection Platform. Salt Surface functions as a proactive reconnaissance tool, offering an attacker’s perspective of your public API attack surface.

Unlike passive methods that only observe existing traffic, Salt Surface actively scans your external domains to identify all possible API endpoints. Supported by ongoing research from Salt Labs, its discovery methods remain up-to-date with the latest attacker techniques, providing an accurate, evidence-based assessment of your external security posture.

A Salt Surface Assessment moves the conversation from “what-ifs” to “what-is.” It provides undeniable proof of risks that are likely hiding in your environment right now. Key findings often include:

• Exposed Internal Assets: Discovering internal or non-production hosts like api-dev and api-test that have been accidentally exposed to the internet, providing a potential backdoor for attackers.
• Shadow & Zombie APIs: Uncovering undocumented APIs that were never formally approved and deprecated APIs that were never decommissioned, leaving them unpatched and vulnerable.
• Critical Misconfigurations: Pinpointing high-severity issues, like an API that fetches sensitive member information by ID without proper authentication—a strong indicator of a BOLA vulnerability, the #1 API security risk.

Get Your Complimentary API Attack Surface Assessment

The best way to understand your risk is to see it for yourself. For a limited time, the Salt Security team is offering a complimentary, personalized API Attack Surface Assessment.

We will use Salt Surface to scan your public-facing domains and compile a clear, evidence-based report of your API risks and potential vulnerabilities. If you’re attending Black Hat 2025, we can even schedule a time to review your personalized report with you at the conference.

Don’t wait for a breach to discover what’s hiding in plain sight.

Click Here to Request Your Free API Attack Surface Assessment Today

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Salt Security blog authored by Eric Schwake. Read the original post at: https://salt.security/blog/seeing-your-apis-through-an-attackers-eyes-introducing-salt-surface