Alternatives to 42Crunch on NestJS
What middleBrick covers
- Black-box scanning with no agents or SDK dependencies
- Risk scoring from A to F with prioritized findings
- Coverage of 12 OWASP API Top 10 categories
- OpenAPI 3.0/3.1 and Swagger 2.0 parsing with $ref resolution
- Authenticated scans with strict header allowlists
- Scheduled monitoring and diff-based alerting
Black-box scanning for any backend framework
middleBrick is a self-service API security scanner that operates as a black-box solution. Submit any public URL and receive a risk score from A to F with prioritized findings. It does not require agents, SDKs, or access to your source code, so it works with any language, framework, or cloud environment, including NestJS services.
Detection aligned to OWASP API Top 10 and schema validation
The scanner covers 12 categories aligned to the OWASP API Top 10 (2023), including authentication bypass, BOLA and BFLA, property over-exposure, input validation, rate limiting, data exposure, encryption, SSRF, inventory management, unsafe consumption, and LLM/AI security. For API specifications, it parses OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 with recursive $ref resolution and cross-references spec definitions against runtime behavior to identify undefined security schemes, sensitive fields, deprecated operations, and missing pagination.
Authenticated scanning and safe probe design
Authenticated scanning is available in the Starter tier and above for Bearer tokens, API keys, Basic auth, and cookies. Domain verification is enforced through DNS TXT records or an HTTP well-known file so only the domain owner can scan with credentials. The scanner only sends read-only methods such as GET and HEAD, plus text-only POST for LLM probes, and forwards a strict allowlist of headers. It does not attempt to fix, patch, block, or remediate issues; it reports findings with remediation guidance.
Continuous monitoring and integration options
With Pro tier, you can schedule rescans every 6 hours, daily, weekly, or monthly. The system detects diffs between scans, highlighting new findings, resolved findings, and score drift. Alerts are sent via email at a rate-limited cadence of 1 per hour per API, and HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks can notify external systems, auto-disabling after 5 consecutive failures. Integration options include a CLI, GitHub Actions as CI/CD gates, an MCP server for AI coding assistants, and a programmatic API for custom workflows.
Compliance mapping and data handling
middleBrick maps findings directly to PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Type II, and OWASP API Top 10 (2023), and it supports audit evidence for other frameworks through alignment language. The scanner does not perform intrusive tests such as active SQL injection or command injection, does not detect business logic vulnerabilities, and does not replace a human pentester for high-stakes audits. Scan data is deletable on demand and purged within 30 days of cancellation; customer data is never sold or used for model training.