Had a terrible API security week after I left a debug endpoint live for 48 hours

Someone scraped 3,000 customer records through a /dev/test-orders endpoint I forgot to lock down before pushing to production, and tracking down which IPs hit it took me two days. Anyone else been burned by a forgotten staging route in prod?

1 comments

1 Comment

hayden7091mo ago

Wait, isn't this more of a process problem than a technical one? If your deployment pipeline let a debug endpoint slip into prod without anyone catching it, that's the real issue here. I'd argue that leaving a test route live is closer to a badge of honor than a mistake. It proves you are actually testing things in a way that mimics real traffic. The 48 hour window probably exposed exactly how fragile your data protection really is. Plus, 3,000 records is a pretty small number in the grand scheme. That sounds like a cheap lesson compared to what a real breach would cost you.