Alternatives to 42Crunch for CTOs

middleBrick is a self-service API security scanner that operates as a black-box solution. Submit a target URL and receive a risk score from A to F with prioritized findings. No agents, SDKs, or code access are required, and the scanner works with any language, framework, or cloud stack. Scan duration is under a minute, using read-only methods such as GET and HEAD, with text-only POST allowed for LLM probes.

The scanner covers 12 security categories aligned to OWASP API Top 10 (2023). It maps findings to this standard to validate related controls. Detection includes authentication bypass, JWT misconfigurations such as alg=none or expired tokens, BOLA and IDOR via sequential ID probing, BFLA and privilege escalation attempts, over-exposed properties, input validation issues like CORS misconfigurations and dangerous HTTP methods, rate-limiting indicators, data exposure including PII and API key patterns, encryption hygiene, SSRF indicators, and inventory management gaps. An OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 parser with recursive $ref resolution cross-references spec definitions against runtime results to identify undefined security schemes or deprecated operations.

Authenticated scanning is available from the Starter tier and above, supporting Bearer, API key, Basic auth, and Cookie credentials. Domain verification through DNS TXT records or an HTTP well-known file ensures only domain owners can scan with credentials. The scanner uses a strict header allowlist containing Authorization, X-API-Key, Cookie, and X-Custom-* headers. All operations are read-only; destructive payloads are never sent, and private IPs, localhost, and cloud metadata endpoints are blocked at multiple layers. Customer data is deletable on demand and purged within 30 days of cancellation.

The Web Dashboard centralizes scans, reports, and score trend tracking, with the option to download branded compliance PDFs. The CLI via the middlebrick npm package supports commands such as middlebrick scan <url> with JSON or text output. A GitHub Action is available for CI/CD gating, failing builds when scores drop below a set threshold. The MCP Server enables scanning from AI coding assistants including Claude and Cursor. For ongoing coverage, the Pro tier offers scheduled rescans every 6 hours, daily, weekly, or monthly, diff detection across scans, email alerts at a rate-limited frequency of 1 per hour per API, and HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks that auto-disable after 5 consecutive failures.

The scanner includes LLM / AI Security testing with 18 adversarial probes across Quick, Standard, and Deep tiers. These probes cover system prompt extraction, instruction override, DAN and roleplay jailbreaks, data exfiltration, cost exploitation, encoding bypass techniques, translation-embedded injection, few-shot poisoning, markdown injection, multi-turn manipulation, indirect prompt injection, token smuggling, tool-abuse, nested instruction injection, and PII extraction. The tool has explicit limitations; it does not fix, patch, block, or remediate findings, nor does it perform active SQL or command injection testing, detect business logic issues, or identify blind SSRF. It is not a replacement for a human pentester in high-stakes audits.