Application Security – Use NPM Request Package for APIs Access

This blog represents code sample and related details that can be used to hack into the system through unprotected APIs. The security vulnerability such as following can be exploited using the code sample given later in this article. Note that the security vulnerabilities mentioned below forms part of OWASP 2017 Top 10 security vulnerabilities.

• Insufficient attack protection
• Sensitive data exposure
• Unprotected APIs

The code below has made use of NPM request package to send the request to the API hosted ast Paytm Catalog Site. The API below displays electronics items listed on PayTMMall.com.

var request = require('request');

var url = "https://catalog.paytm.com/v2/h/electronics?channel=web&child_site_id=6&site_id=2&version=2&platform_version=S2(New)";
var method = "POST";
var headers = {
"content-type": "application/json",
"accept": "*/*"
};

var data = {"tracking":{"current_page":"https://paytmmall.com/shop/h/electronics","prev_page":""},"context":{"device":{"os":"Linux x86_64","device_type":"PC","browser_uuid":"GA1.2.35123967.1498556341","ua":"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:55.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/55.0","connection_type":"Unknown"},"channel":"WEB","user":{"ga_id":"GA1.2.35123967.1498556341","user_id":null}}}
var isJSON = true;

request({
url: url,
method: method,
body: data,
json: isJSON,
headers: headers,
},
function (error, response, body) {
if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
console.log(body);
}
console.log("Response: " + JSON.stringify(response));
console.log("Error: " + error);
});

Put the code shown above in a file, say, test.js and execute the file using command such as node test.js. The output would display data retrieved from the website.

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Ajitesh Kumar

I have been recently working in the area of Data Science and Machine Learning / Deep Learning. In addition, I am also passionate about various different technologies including programming languages such as Java/JEE, Javascript, Python, R, Julia etc and technologies such as Blockchain, mobile computing, cloud-native technologies, application security, cloud computing platforms, big data etc. I would love to connect with you on Linkedin.

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