Alternatives to 42Crunch on Actix Web

middleBrick is a self-service API security scanner that operates as a black-box solution against Actix Web services. You submit a target URL and receive a risk score from A to F with prioritized findings. The scanner uses only read-only methods (GET and HEAD) and text-only POST for LLM probes, requiring no agents, SDKs, or code access. Scan times remain under one minute, making it practical to validate security posture during development and before production deployment.

The scanner detects issues across 12 categories aligned to OWASP API Top 10 (2023), providing coverage relevant to Actix Web implementations. Findings map to PCI-DSS 4.0 and SOC 2 Type II controls, and the tool surfaces findings relevant to audit evidence for these frameworks. Detection areas include authentication bypasses, JWT misconfigurations such as alg=none and expired tokens, BOLA and IDOR via sequential ID probing, BFLA and privilege escalation attempts, and data exposure through PII and API key leakage patterns.

• Authentication and security headers.
• IDOR and sequential enumeration.
• Over-exposed properties and mass-assignment surface.
• CORS misconfigurations and dangerous HTTP methods.
• SSRF indicators and URL-accepting parameters.
• LLM-specific adversarial probes across Quick, Standard, and Deep tiers.

middleBrick parses OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 documents with recursive $ref resolution, cross-referencing spec definitions against runtime behavior for Actix Web APIs. This helps identify undefined security schemes, sensitive field exposure, deprecated operations, and missing pagination in the published contract. For authenticated scans on Starter tier and above, you can provide Bearer tokens, API keys, Basic auth, or cookies. Domain verification is enforced through DNS TXT records or an HTTP well-known file, ensuring only the domain owner can submit credentials. The scanner forwards a strict header allowlist including Authorization, X-API-Key, Cookie, and X-Custom-* to minimize exposure.

With Pro tier, continuous monitoring schedules rescans every 6 hours, daily, weekly, or monthly and detects diffs between scans, including new findings, resolved issues, and score drift. Alerts are rate-limited to one email per hour per API and can be delivered to Slack or Teams. HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks provide automated feedback into CI/CD pipelines, with auto-disable after five consecutive failures. The GitHub Action enforces quality gates by failing builds when scores drop below a defined threshold, integrating directly into development workflows without requiring agents or code modifications.

middleBrick does not fix, patch, or block findings; it reports with remediation guidance. It does not execute active SQL injection or command injection tests, as those fall outside read-only scope. Business logic vulnerabilities and blind SSRF are out of scope, and the tool is not a replacement for a human pentester in high-stakes audits. Safety measures include blocking private IPs, localhost, and cloud metadata endpoints at multiple layers. Customer data is deletable on demand and purged within 30 days of cancellation, and it is never sold or used for model training.