Chapter 5: Understanding Authorization Options
In 2017, Equifax, a large credit reporting agency, announced that they had been hacked. Data from 147 million of their users had been stolen. Years of lawsuits and fines followed and by the time everything had been paid out, the hack cost Equifax more than 1.7 billion dollars.
Although this is one of the most expensive hacks in history, it is far from the only one. Many thousands of companies have been hacked and lost data. The cost of these hacks might range from dollar amounts that end in billions, to those that are "only" in the millions, but the fact remains that security is an extremely important part of any application.
One of the most common ways that attackers get into systems is through APIs. In the Equifax case, the attackers got in initially due to an unpatched server, but then, they were able to extract data for several months by using the APIs that Equifax provides. APIs are meant to be interacted with programmatically...
