The world lives on an overwhelming degree of centralization, whether financial institutions such as banks, local supermarkets, or web apps. The centralization of services and needs offer convenience, ease of use, and accessibility. Of course, there are disadvantages of having centralized points of access and processes that we rely on. It is especially true for technology infrastructure. A centralized point of moving and storing data becomes a crucial and vital point for businesses and end-users.
The APIS project mission states: “A product is only as decentralized as its most centralized component.” APIS has a mission to execute and grow an ecosystem to realize a vision of decentralized finance and the internet without any platform risk from overregulation and disruption. The most decentralized aspects of platforms and web stacks are the data index and querying layer, mission-critical components. Decentralized applications would not achieve mainstream adoption without these components. Thus, APIS allows for decentralized finance and web products to grow and scale the world internet while maintaining fully decentralized web architecture security properties.
Worldwide cyberattack events are on constant occurrences. The need for safeguards and protection against these attacks is always a battle to monitor daily. Centralized web and technology infrastructures are targets for cybersecurity breaches and crime.
For example, Databases are a key target for cybercriminals due to the often valuable nature of sensitive information locked away on rows and columns. Whether the data is financial, personal identity, or holds the intellectual property and corporate secrets, hackers worldwide can profit from breaching a businesses’ servers and plundering datasets found in databases.
According to a cybersecurity reporting website such as Dark Reading, cybercriminals take advantage of several key security failures and databases’ misconfigurations. However, it is often the enterprise’s staff — database developers, administrators, and the like — who create the environment necessary for attacks to gain unlawful and intruding data access.
The researchers say that the top ten vulnerabilities often found in database-driven systems, whether during the creation phase, through the integration of applications, or when updating and patching, are:
Deployment Failures
The most common cause of database vulnerabilities is a lack of maintenance and oversight when they are deployed. Any given database should be tested for functionality and ensures it is doing what the database is designed to do. There needs to be more quality control and testing to check the databases for proper functionality.
Broken databases
The SQL Slammer worm of 2003 infected more than 90 percent of vulnerable computers within 10 minutes of deployment, taking down thousands of databases in minutes. This worm took advantage of a bug discovered in Microsoft’s SQL Server database software the previous year. Still, few system administrators installed a fix, leaving computers vulnerable.
The worm’s cybersecurity breach and exploits demonstrate how critical installing security patches and fixes are by taking advantage of a buffer-overflow vulnerability. However, due to lack of time, properly trained professionals, or resources, not enough businesses keep their systems regularly patched, leaving databases vulnerable.
Data leaks
Databases are considered a “back end” part of a company office and secure from internet-based threats and connections (and data doesn’t have to be encrypted), but this is not the case. Databases contain a networking interface, so hackers can capture this type of traffic to exploit it. To avoid data leaks, administrators should use SSL- or TLS-encrypted communication platforms.
Stolen database backups
External cyberattackers can infiltrate systems to steal data as a threat vector for companies, but what about those inside the corporation? Many cybersecurity breaches and crime case studies report that corporate insiders are also likely to steal data archives — including database backups — whether for money, profit, or personal endeavors such as revenge. This is a common risk and problem for the modern IT enterprise environments, and businesses should consider encrypting archives to mitigate the insider-risk.
The abuse of database features
Many cybersecurity research says that every database exploit has been based on the misuse of standard database features. For example, a hacker can access legitimate credentials before forcing the service to run arbitrary code. However, a thoroughly complex process, these kinds of exploits for access was gained through simple flaws that allow such systems to be taken advantage of or bypassed completely in many cases. Prevention of future unlawful cybercrime entries can be limited by removing unnecessary tools, not destroying the possibility of zero-day exploits.
A lack of segregation
The separation of administrator and user powers and the segregation of duties can make it more difficult for cybersecurity staff to detect fraud or theft. Limiting user accounts’ ability may give a hacker a more challenging time taking complete control of a database.
Hopscotch
Taking advantage of a buffer overflow and gain complete access to a database, cybercriminals often play a game of Hopscotch, which means finding a weakness within the infrastructure that can be used as leverage for more serious attacks until they reach the back-end database system. For example, a hacker may use a cybercrime-related computer program such as a worm, which can find its way through the accounting department before hitting the business’s credit card processing area.
SQL injections
A popular method for cyber hackers to pursue is the use of, SQL injections which remain a critical problem in protecting enterprise databases. When SQL injections attack applications, the database administrator will need to clean up variables and malicious code inserted into strings, later passed to an instance of a database server for parsing and execution.
Sub-standard key management
Key management systems are built to keep keys safe. Still, cybersecurity research has often found encryption keys stored on company disk drives, and placing such keys in an unprotected state can leave systems vulnerable to attack.
Database inconsistencies
The most common thread that brings all of these vulnerabilities together is lack of consistency, an administrative rather than a database technology problem. System administrators and database developers need to develop a consistent business practice in looking after and maintaining their databases. There is a need for documentation and automation to track and make changes to ensure that the enterprise networks’ information is kept secure.
The APIS platform provides a protocol for decentralizing index and query services for reading from the blockchain (database), includes high level DeFi and yield farming queries. In the APIS ecosystem, database maintenance and security will be handled and maintained by the platform. A REST API is a way for two computer systems to communicate over HTTP in a similar way to web browsers and servers. Sharing data between two or more database systems has always been a fundamental requirement of software development. For example, consider buying car insurance. Your insurer must obtain information about you and your vehicle, so they request data via REST API from databases of car registration authorities, credit agencies, banks, and other systems. All of this collection happens in the transactional database process in real-time to determine whether a car insurance policy can be offered to you based on collected data.
To query a blockchain, a decentralized database, there are technical tradeoffs in which it involves speed for reading and writing data. When data is not indexed in a database, it will take time to return a query.
The APIS platform can speed up with indexing data. While similar indexing protocols are speeding up reads:
The APIS project adds the capability to write to the decentralized databases (multi — blockchains) to complete the development needs.
There is also a plan on the roadmap to decentralize the APIS queries by allowing developers to run decentralized APIS nodes, with incentives of earning API tokens. Each node operator needs to stake the API token to avoid bad participants.
The APIS ecosystem’s queries are requested by decentralized applications, while API Nodes indexes and manages databases. On the APIS platform, queries are sent by client-side applications directly to Gateways in GraphQL and REST formatting. This allows APIS adoption from a global developer population and public blockchains.
👋 About THE APIS:
The APIS is an indexing protocol for reading and writing to open networks. Making APIs open and accessible to power a decentralized world.
