42Crunch for CISOs

42Crunch is a self-service API security scanner designed for executive oversight and operational integration. Submit a target URL and receive a risk score on an A–F scale, with prioritized findings mapped to PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Type II, and OWASP API Top 10 (2023). The scanner performs black-box testing using only read-only methods, completes in under a minute, and requires no agents, SDKs, or code access.

CISOs manage cross-team risk reduction with constrained engineering capacity. MiddleBrick supports both ad hoc scans and continuous monitoring, allowing security teams to set schedules (every 6 hours, daily, weekly, monthly) and receive diffs that highlight new findings, resolved items, and score drift. Email alerts are rate-limited to 1 per hour per API to reduce noise, and HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks can feed risk signals into existing SIEM or governance workflows. The platform provides a web dashboard for scan management, report generation, and trend review, which helps audit evidence collection for frameworks aligned with security controls described in SOC 2 Type II and PCI-DSS 4.0.

The scanner conducts read-only assessments using GET and HEAD methods, with text-only POST support for LLM probes. It never sends destructive payloads and blocks private IPs, localhost, and cloud metadata endpoints at multiple layers. Customer data is deletable on demand and purged within 30 days of cancellation; it is never sold or used for model training. Because the tool does not perform active SQL injection or command injection, it stays within a non-intrusive scope and surfaces findings relevant to compliance and architectural review without attempting remediation.

The scanner detects issues across 12 categories aligned to OWASP API Top 10 (2023), including Authentication bypass, BOLA and BFLA, Property Authorization over-exposure, Input Validation, Rate Limiting, Data Exposure (PII and API key patterns), Encryption misconfigurations, SSRF indicators, Inventory Management, Unsafe Consumption, and LLM/AI Security. It parses OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 with recursive $ref resolution and cross-references spec definitions against runtime results to identify undefined security schemes, sensitive fields, deprecated operations, and missing pagination. This approach helps you prepare for audits that reference security controls described in SOC 2 Type II and PCI-DSS 4.0, while making the scanner practical for modern polyglot environments.

For authenticated scans, the platform supports Bearer tokens, API keys, Basic auth, and Cookies, with a domain verification gate that requires DNS TXT record or HTTP well-known file proof of ownership. Only a limited set of headers is forwarded, including Authorization, X-API-Key, Cookie, and X-Custom-* to limit credential exposure. Integration options include a CLI, a GitHub Action for CI/CD gating, an MCP Server for AI coding assistants, and a programmatic API for custom tooling. These options allow security and engineering leaders to enforce risk thresholds in development pipelines and to operationalize findings without disrupting release cadence.