CODEWITHSUNDEEP
amazon-web-servicesurlaws-lambdabackendaws-api-gateway
Lakshman Diwaakar
Lakshman Diwaakar

Reputation: 7579

How to secure the APIGateway generated URL?

I have a serverless backend that operates with APIGateway and Lambda. Here is my architecture: Architecture

Currently, anyone with my APIGateway's URL can query or mutate the data. How do I protect the URL, so that only the client(react app) can access it. So, here is my concern, anyone can open the network tab in chrome console and get my APIGateway's URL and can use it using curl or postman. I want to prevent that.

Solutions I had in my mind:

  1. Set up a CORS, so that only the origin can access it. But, I have a different lambda that invokes this URL. So, CORS wont work out.

I am sure there are some methods with the APIGateway itself. I am not getting right search term to get it from AWS documentation. I would also like to know what are the best practices to prevent accessing the backend URL apart from the Client(React App)

Update after @Ashan answer:

Thank you @Ashan for the answer. In my case, I use Auth0, so custom authoriser should work for me. I just came across this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4hsWVXCuVI, which pretty much explains all the authorization and authentication possible with APIGateway. I am aware that authentication is possible either by Cognito/Auth0, but I have some simple websites, that has form, whose backend is handled by APIGateway. I can prevent the abuse from scraping bots using captcha, but once the attacker has got the URL, header and request parameters, he can invoke that million times. One thing, we can do is having an API-Key, but it is a static string with no expiration. Once the headers are with him, he can abuse it. So, any idea, how to prevent this in APIGateway. If not any other service apart from AWS that I can look for? Would be glad, If I get an answer for this.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2300

Answers (1)

Ashan
Ashan

Reputation: 19738

Currently API Gateway does not support private urls, so it will be publicly available.

To restrict access you need to use a authorizer to authenticate and authorize the request using IAM policies. There are two options available at the moment.

  • IAM authorizer
  • Custom authorizer

If your authentication flow can directly (AWS STS, IAM user access keys or roles) or indirectly(Using AWS Cognito Userpools or any other SSO provider) can get temporary security credentials, then you can use IAM authorizer. From API Gateway side no code involved and its a matter of selecting the IAM check box for each API Gateway resource. You can use the API Gateway SDKs to invoke API Gateway requests where the SDK will handle the heavy liftings in setting up authentication headers.

If you use your own authentication mechanism, then you can write a seperate Lambda function to validate the tokens. This Lambda function name can be specified at API Gateway with the http hearder name to access the custom token to verify the requests.

To control API usage by authorized consumers, using API Key is the only way native to AWS at the moment.

Since you are using S3 for the react app hosting, you can further reduce the attack surface by using AWS WAF and CloudFront infront your application stack. The API Key can be added to CloudFront headers to forward to your APIGateway origin and since CloudFront and APIGateway communication happens using SSL, its nearly impossible for someone to find the API key. Using AWS WAF you can limit malicious access for common attacks. This includes rate based blocking to limit someone from repeatedly invoking the API.

Upvotes: 2

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