Migrating from 42Crunch to middleBrick for Mobile backend BOLA testing

When testing mobile backend BOLA today, you likely rely on 42Crunch to define authorization models and run policy checks. You define subjects, objects, and actions, then execute policy evaluations against live endpoints. That workflow gives structured policy decisions but depends on upfront modeling and tight coupling to the gateway runtime.

Migrating to middleBrick changes the approach: testing shifts to black-box probing without gateways, agents, or SDKs. You submit a URL and receive a risk score with prioritized findings. Because the scanner is read-only, it fits cleanly into existing test environments without modifying gateway rules or redeploying services.

Where 42Crunch maps policy intent, middleBrick maps findings to three frameworks: PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Type II, and OWASP API Top 10 (2023). For other regulations, the scanner aligns with security controls described in frameworks such as HIPAA or GDPR, supporting audit evidence without claiming certification or compliance.

Mobile backend BOLA testing often involves enumerating identifiers, probing adjacent records, and checking whether authorization is enforced per object. middleBrick covers these scenarios through dedicated detection categories aligned to OWASP API Top 10 (2023).

• Authentication checks multi-method bypass and JWT misconfigurations such as alg=none, weak key choices, expired tokens, missing claims, and sensitive data in claims.
• BOLA / IDOR detects sequential ID enumeration and active adjacent-ID probing without requiring prior knowledge of business logic.
• Property Authorization surfaces over-exposure of internal fields, mass-assignment surface, and data exposure via API responses.
• Input Validation identifies CORS wildcard usage (with and without credentials), dangerous HTTP methods, and debug endpoints that should not be exposed.

The scanner parses OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 with recursive $ref resolution, then cross-references spec definitions against runtime findings to highlight undefined security schemes, deprecated operations, and missing pagination that can amplify BOLA risks.

For endpoints that require authentication, middleBrick supports Bearer, API key, Basic auth, and Cookie credentials at the Starter tier and above. You provide tokens or keys, and the scanner includes them in authorized requests while respecting a strict header allowlist: Authorization, X-API-Key, Cookie, and X-Custom-* headers only.

Before authenticated scans run, a domain verification gate requires DNS TXT record validation or an HTTP well-known file to prove domain ownership. This ensures that only the domain owner can submit credentials for scanning, reducing the risk of testing third-party systems inadvertently.

In contrast to 42Crunch’s gateway-centric model, this approach removes the need to propagate policies into runtime enforcement points. You can validate whether mobile API routes correctly enforce authorization without changing any gateway or service configuration.

With Pro tier, you enable continuous monitoring to rescans on schedules of 6 hours, daily, weekly, or monthly. Each new scan produces a diff against prior results, highlighting new findings, resolved findings, and score drift specific to BOLA and related authorization issues.

For CI/CD integration, the GitHub Action acts as a gate, failing the build when the risk score drops below a threshold you define. This provides a simple, automated control that does not require embedding agents or SDKs in your mobile services.

Alerting includes rate-limited email (1 per hour per API) and HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks that auto-disable after 5 consecutive failures. These mechanisms allow you to incorporate findings into existing incident response processes while preserving the read-only nature of the scanner.

middleBrick detects indicators and misconfigurations but does not fix, patch, block, or remediate. It does not perform active SQL injection or command injection, as those require intrusive payloads outside its scope. It also does not detect business logic vulnerabilities, blind SSRF, or subtle authorization bypasses that depend on deep domain knowledge.

LLM / AI Security testing adds 18 adversarial probes across Quick, Standard, and Deep tiers, covering system prompt extraction, instruction override, jailbreak techniques, data exfiltration attempts, and token smuggling. These checks run read-only text-only POST probes and do not generate destructive traffic.

Because no scanner replaces human expertise for complex flows, use middleBrick to surface issues quickly and then engage security specialists to validate context-specific BOLA scenarios and implement appropriate access controls.