30,000 APIs Exposed: Lessons from the Postman Data Breach

Summary

• Postman data leak exposed over 30,000 public workspaces, revealing sensitive information like API keys, tokens, and credentials due to misconfigured sharing settings.

• Poor security practices, including inadequate secrets management, failure to rotate API keys, and insufficient training, were the main causes.

• The leak allowed attackers to exploit leaked credentials, leading to unauthorized API access and potential data theft.

• To prevent similar incidents, teams should adopt stricter access controls, use secrets management tools, rotate API keys regularly, and train developers on secure API practices.

How 30,000 APIs Became Exposed

On December 23, 2024, CloudSEK's TRIAD team unveiled a critical security issue involving Postman, a widely used API development and testing platform. Their investigation revealed over 30,000 public workspaces leaking sensitive information such as API keys, access tokens, and refresh tokens.

These misconfigurations exposed businesses and individuals to significant risks, including unauthorized access to cloud resources, payment gateways, and third-party services.

The problem stemmed from improper workspace settings, insufficient use of secrets management tools, and a lack of API key rotation. Despite the widespread use of Postman, many developers failed to follow basic security protocols, highlighting the urgent need for stricter access controls and better education about secure API practices.

Let’s examine the technical details and root causes of the Postman data leak to understand the severity of this breach. 

Understand The Postman Data Leak

The Postman data leak exposed over 30,000 workspaces, revealing sensitive information such as API keys, tokens, and administrator credentials. api.github.com, slack.com, login.microsoft.com, and salesforce.com were some of the major platforms affected by the breach:

The root cause of the breach was the improper use of Postman’s sharing and collaboration features, coupled with insufficient security practices. Here’s a closer look at the technical details:

1. Misconfigured Sharing Permissions

Postman workspaces are designed to facilitate collaboration, enabling teams to share environments, collections, and variables. However, misconfigured visibility settings led to many workspaces being set to “public” rather than “private.”

• How It Happened: Developers unknowingly or, due to oversight, shared workspaces without reviewing visibility options. Publicly accessible workspaces could be indexed by search engines or accessed by anyone with the workspace URL.
• Implications: These shared workspaces often included environment files containing sensitive data such as API keys, access tokens, and plaintext passwords. This data, once exposed, provided attackers with direct access to critical systems or services.

An attacker finding an exposed workspace URL could extract credentials and use them to make unauthorized API requests, access sensitive data, or manipulate systems connected to the API. 

2. Lack of Secrets Management

Many Postman users stored sensitive credentials directly within environment variables, ignoring or underutilizing the tool's built-in security features, such as secret management.

• What Went Wrong: Instead of securely storing secrets in encrypted or restricted locations, developers embedded them directly in variables visible to collaborators or anyone accessing the workspace.
• The Technical Gap: Postman offers features like "secret masking" and encrypted variable storage, but these require active implementation by users. The lack of adoption left sensitive credentials exposed and easily accessible in plaintext.
• Consequence: An exposed API key or token could allow attackers to bypass authentication mechanisms, access backend systems, or compromise third-party integrations.

3. Absence of Proper API Key Rotation

Organizations often fail to rotate exposed API keys promptly, exacerbating the problem.

• Why It Matters: Even if a credential is leaked, prompt rotation minimizes the time it remains usable by unauthorized parties. However, many exposed keys remained active long after being leaked.
• Resulting Risks: Prolonged exposure allowed attackers to repeatedly exploit the credentials, potentially gaining deeper access to internal systems, databases, and customer information.

4. Insufficient Awareness and Training

One of the most significant contributors to the Postman API breach was a lack of awareness among developers about the implications of sharing Postman environments publicly.

• Knowledge Gaps: Many users were unaware of the visibility settings or the need to secure sensitive information within shared workspaces. Best practices for sharing and secrets management were often overlooked.
• Missed Opportunities for Training: Organizations failed to educate teams on the correct use of Postman’s collaboration tools or the broader security implications of API development. This lack of training led to repeated errors in configuration and sharing.
• Provide Teams with Comprehensive Security Guide: Equip your engineering and product teams with a clear understanding of API security risks and how to mitigate them. A well-structured guide can help them avoid common pitfalls and adopt best practices effectively.

The bigger picture

The Postman data leak wasn’t a result of a flaw in the tool itself but rather how it was used. While powerful, the platform’s features for sharing and collaboration require careful implementation and adherence to security best practices.

This incident underscores the need for technical rigor, including enforcing strict access controls, educating developers, and adopting automated tools to identify and mitigate misconfigurations before they result in exposure. It also underscores the growing threat of API abuse, where vulnerabilities and misconfigurations can be exploited to steal data, disrupt services, and compromise systems.

Preventive Steps and Best Practices For Preventing Another Breach

To effectively reduce the risks associated with API development and management, and to ensure robust security across all stages of the software lifecycle, organizations need to adopt these best practices:

Enforce Strict Access Controls

• Ensure that workspaces and collections are private by default, limiting access to only authorized personnel.
• Use role-based access control (RBAC) to assign permissions based on roles and responsibilities.
• Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) for an added layer of security and regularly audit access logs to identify any unauthorized access or suspicious activity.
• Establish clear guidelines for API access, visibility, and usage across teams. Following API governance best practices ensures consistent security measures and minimizes risks across the organization.

Adopt Secrets Management Tools

• Use specialized tools to store sensitive data securely and avoid plaintext storage in shared environments.
• Implement external solutions like HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager for advanced capabilities.
• Mask sensitive variables in shared collections to prevent accidental exposure.

Rotate API Keys and Tokens Regularly

• Limit the impact of leaked credentials by ensuring they are updated frequently.
• Configure short-lived tokens that expire after a specified duration. Automate the rotation process using CI/CD pipelines or orchestration tools.
• Develop an incident response policy to quickly revoke and reissue compromised keys.

Invest in Security Training for Developers

• Equip development teams with the skills to manage sensitive data securely and understand the risks of misconfigurations.
• Train developers on API management platform features, such as workspace visibility settings.
• Highlight the importance of not embedding sensitive data in shared collections or environment files.
• Promote a culture of accountability and regular knowledge sharing on API security.

Deploy Automated Scanning and Observability Tools

• Implement tools to detect exposed credentials and alert teams about potential vulnerabilities. Use platforms like Assetnote Surface Monitoring and CybelAngel for proactive detection of leaked API keys.
• Configure Postman or any other API observability tool to automatically review workspace activity and flag anomalies.
• Integrate these tools with incident management systems for faster remediation.

Conduct Regular Security Audits

• Periodic assessments ensure compliance with security standards and uncover vulnerabilities before they are exploited.
• Review shared collections for sensitive information and misconfigurations. Analyze access control settings to verify compliance with security policies.
• Test the effectiveness of secrets management tools and access logs in detecting anomalies.

By implementing these steps, organizations can effectively reduce the likelihood of data leaks and enhance their overall API security posture.

Treblle: A Better Way to Secure APIs

While implementing best practices is essential for robust API security, implementing an API intelligence platform like Treblle enhances security, observability, and compliance. Here's how Treblle stands out:

Real-Time Threat Detection

Treblle actively monitors your APIs for unauthorized activities and potential threats. It automatically identifies and flags:

• Unauthorized Requests: Any attempts to access APIs without proper credentials or permissions.
• SQL Injection Attempts: A common attack vector where malicious actors try to exploit databases through API queries.
• Unusual Behavior Patterns: Patterns indicative of brute force attempts, credential stuffing, or other sophisticated cyberattacks.

Treblle also ensures that teams are alerted instantly over slack and email, allowing them to respond quickly and prevent further damage.

Visibility and Control

Treblle provides complete visibility into API performance, usage, security, and governance, offering teams the data they need to manage APIs effectively. With Treblle, teams gain access to:

• Performance Insights: Metrics such as response times, error rates, and latency, enabling teams to optimize API performance.
• Usage Analytics: A detailed view of who is using your APIs, how they are being used, and any anomalies in traffic.
• Governance: Evaluate each API for AI-readiness, design, performance, and security, and compare it against industry benchmarks to generate a score on a scale of 100, allowing teams to identify gaps and improve their API quality and compliance.

Treblle ensures your team has all the data they need to build and maintain enterprise-grade APIs.

Compliance Support

One of Treblle’s standout features is its ability to assist organizations in maintaining compliance with data protection and privacy regulations. 

Treblle automatically:

• Identifies Sensitive Data: Automatically flags personally identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive data, such as credit card numbers or health records, being transmitted through APIs.
• Ensures GDPR, CCPA, and PCI Compliance: Highlights any violations, enabling teams to remediate issues proactively and avoid regulatory penalties.
• Provides Detailed Audit Logs: Maintains records of API activities to support compliance audits and ensure transparency. 

This comprehensive compliance support not only helps organizations meet regulatory requirements but also builds trust with stakeholders by safeguarding sensitive information.

Conclusion

The Postman data leak underscores the critical need for secure API practices. Misconfigured permissions, poor secrets management, and insufficient training contributed to exposing sensitive credentials, highlighting vulnerabilities in how APIs are managed—challenges we also uncovered in our comprehensive API report for 2024.

In response, Postman assured its users: "Postman is committed to ensuring the security of its users. We have introduced secret-protection policies to prevent public workspaces from exposing sensitive information and are continuing to enhance our security features to safeguard our community."

While this is a step in the right direction, organizations must adopt a dual approach: implementing best practices and leveraging API intelligence platform like Treblle. With real-time threat detection, compliance support, and enhanced observability, Treblle helps teams address vulnerabilities before they become incidents.