The Haunted House of APIs - The Dark Corners of APIs with Katie Paxton-Fear
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Hello, listeners. Today, we are releasing another episode for Cybersecurity Awareness Month as part of our series, The Haunted House of APIs, sponsored by our friends, Traceable. In this series, we are building awareness around APIs, their security risks, and what you can do about it. Traceable AI is building one platform to secure every API so you can discover, protect, and test all your APIs with contextual security, enabling organizations to minimize risk and maximize the value APIs bring to their customers. Our episode today is titled The Dark Corners of APIs, Uncovering Unknown APIs Lurking in the Shadows, where we speak with Katie Paxton-Fear. APIs are the gateway to your digital infrastructure, but hidden deep in the recesses of your system are unknown APIs. Shadow, rogue, zombie, and undocumented, each of these present a unique threat to your organization and can be exploited by hackers.
Katie is an API hacker and researcher, and today she will take us on a journey through the API graveyard, sharing best practices for ensuring that they don't become your company's next security nightmare. Katie, thank you for being on the show today.
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Before we jump into our topic today, which is the dark corners of APIs, uncovering unknown APIs lurking in the shadows. Super ominous. It gives me chills talking about it. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Tell me in my audience a little bit about you.
Hi, my name is Katie. I'm also known by my handle Insider PhD. I am a cybersecurity YouTuber, a lecturer and an API hacker. I find the vulnerabilities and APIs before the bad guys do. And then I go on YouTube and teach other people how to do the same thing. I've found vulnerabilities in companies all over the world that you've definitely heard of that I can't talk about because I've got an NDA, but there are certainly companies there. I have been to like tons of live hacking events. So that's where companies fly out some of the best hackers in the world just to focus on their software. And I work at a company called Traceable that sells an API security solution. And I work in technical marketing, which means I write technical content. I get to be a professional API security influencer, which doesn't sound like it's a real job title, but I promise.
Sounds like a really fun job title. And I may have just extracted this from what you said about your YouTube channel and things, but what do you do for fun?
Knit.
Okay, I didn't extract that. Tell me about that.
I'm a huge crafter. I spend so long on the computer. I work so much and I'm a very creative person. And I'm very creative. I love making stuff. I love being able to build something. I was a software engineer before I went into cybersecurity and became more of a breaker than a builder. But I always felt with working so much on a computer that it's so digital, it's so intangible that I wasn't feeling that fulfilled by it. So when I was at university, I decided to get a hobby that had absolutely nothing to do with computers. So I learned how to knit. I knit, I crochet, I sew, I do embroidery because this is an audio podcast. You can't see it, but behind me, I have a giant Cthulhu that I crocheted in my office that I use as office decor.
That's amazing. I have to say kudos on your pursuit of analog activities. They are so important to have a balanced approach there. You spend most of your day in the digital world. So kudos on that.
Yeah, I think it's very easy to, you know, you don't get the same reward when you deploy code as you do when you physically can see something that's taken 30 hours of your life to produce and you can touch it and you can interact with it. It's why I think security people love lockpicking. Like everybody's hobby is lockpicking because we crave the material.
No doubt. No doubt. Couldn't agree with that more. Well, let's dive into it then. So let's start uncovering some unknown APIs. Before we even go further, can you explain, you know, as we say that, what do we mean when we say unknown APIs? And, you know, there's obviously some different types there, right? Like some words you use like shadow, rogue, zombie, and undocumented APIs.
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