Alternatives to APIsec on Actix Web

middleBrick is a self-service API security scanner that operates as a black-box tool against Actix Web services. You submit a reachable URL and receive a risk score from A to F within under a minute. The scanner uses only read-only methods (GET and HEAD) plus text-only POST for LLM probes, requiring no agents, SDKs, or code access. This approach works regardless of the language or framework used to build the service, including Actix Web, and avoids any need for build-time instrumentation or runtime agents.

The scanner evaluates 12 categories aligned to OWASP API Top 10 (2023), which maps findings to this framework and covers requirements of the standard. For Actix Web deployments, it checks authentication bypass vectors, JWT misconfigurations such as alg=none or HS256, security header compliance, and WWW-Authenticate handling. It probes for BOLA and IDOR via sequential ID enumeration and active adjacent-ID checks, and tests for BFLA and privilege escalation through admin endpoint discovery and role/permission field leakage. Input validation is assessed by testing CORS wildcard configurations, dangerous HTTP methods, and debug endpoints, while rate limiting is evaluated via header detection and oversized response handling.

Beyond the OWASP Top 10, the scanner surfaces findings relevant to Actix Web, including property authorization risks such as over-exposed internal fields and mass-assignment surface, and data exposure patterns like PII, Luhn-validated card numbers, and API key formats (AWS, Stripe, GitHub, Slack). It validates encryption posture by checking HTTPS redirects, HSTS, and cookie flags, and detects SSRF indicators such as URL-accepting parameters and internal IP probing. Inventory management checks cover missing versioning, legacy path patterns, and server fingerprinting, while unsafe consumption analysis identifies an excessive third-party URL and webhook/callback surface.

middleBrick parses OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 specs with recursive $ref resolution for Actix Web services, cross-referencing definitions against runtime behavior to identify undefined security schemes, sensitive fields, deprecated operations, and missing pagination. For authenticated scans at the Starter tier and above, Bearer tokens, API keys, Basic auth, and cookies are supported, gated by a domain verification step that requires DNS TXT record or HTTP well-known file ownership. Only a limited set of headers is forwarded, including Authorization, X-API-Key, Cookie, and X-Custom-* headers, ensuring controlled and safe authenticated testing.

With Pro tier, continuous monitoring provides scheduled rescans every 6 hours, daily, weekly, or monthly, and tracks score drift by diffing findings across runs. Alerts are delivered via email at a rate-limited frequency of 1 per hour per API, and HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks auto-disable after 5 consecutive failures. The scanner integrates into existing workflows through a web dashboard for report review and trend tracking, a CLI via the middlebrick npm package with JSON or text output, a GitHub Action that can fail CI/CD builds based on score thresholds, and an MCP Server for use with AI coding assistants. Programmatic access is available through an API client for custom integrations.