API security for Pre-seed startups

Pre-seed environments run with minimal staffing and limited budget, so API security must be lightweight to adopt and operate. The scanner is a self-service black-box tool that requires no agents, SDKs, or code access. You submit a URL and receive a risk score with prioritized findings in under a minute, using read-only methods that avoid any production impact.

The scanner covers 12 categories aligned to the OWASP API Top 10 (2023), and it maps findings to PCI-DSS 4.0 and SOC 2 Type II controls where applicable. Detection includes authentication bypasses, JWT misconfigurations such as alg=none, BOLA and IDOR via sequential ID probing, BFLA and privilege escalation attempts, over-exposed properties, input validation issues like CORS wildcard and dangerous methods, rate-limit header visibility, sensitive data exposure including PII and API key formats, encryption misconfigurations, SSRF indicators, and inventory issues such as missing versioning.

For AI-facing APIs, it runs 18 adversarial probes across Quick, Standard, and Deep scan tiers, testing for system prompt extraction, instruction override, jailbreak patterns, data exfiltration attempts, and token smuggling. The tool 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 or deprecated operations.

Authenticated scanning is available from the Starter tier and supports Bearer, API key, Basic auth, and Cookie methods. Domain verification is enforced through a DNS TXT record or an HTTP well-known file to ensure only the domain owner can scan with credentials. The scanner sends only read-only methods and text-based POST for LLM probes; destructive payloads are never used. Private IPs, localhost, and cloud metadata endpoints are blocked at multiple layers, and customer data is deletable on demand and never used for model training.

Findings and trends are accessible through the Web Dashboard, where you can download branded compliance PDFs. The CLI allows on-demand scans with JSON or text output using a command such as middlebrick scan https://api.example.com. The GitHub Action can gate CI/CD, failing the build when the score drops below your chosen threshold. For AI-assisted development, an MCP Server enables scanning from coding assistants, and an API client supports custom integrations.

Pro tier adds scheduled rescans every 6 hours, daily, weekly, or monthly, with diff detection to highlight new findings, resolved issues, and score drift. Email alerts are rate-limited to one per hour per API, and HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks can notify internal systems, auto-disabling after five consecutive failures. This setup helps you maintain visibility without overloading limited engineering capacity.