API Input Validation Security Quiz Quiz

1. Question 1

   What is the primary purpose of validating API input data?

   1. To improve API performance.
   2. To ensure data conforms to expected formats and prevent security vulnerabilities.
   3. To simplify API documentation.
   4. To reduce the size of API request payloads.
   5. To automatically generate API client libraries.

2. Question 2

   Which type of injection attack is most directly mitigated by proper input sanitization and escaping?

   1. Denial of Service (DoS)
   2. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
   3. Buffer Overflow
   4. Session Hijacking
   5. DNS Poisoning

3. Question 3

   If an API endpoint expects an integer representing a user ID, what is a recommended validation technique?

   1. Allow any string as input.
   2. Check if the input is numeric and within a reasonable range.
   3. Assume the client will always send a valid integer.
   4. Base64 encode the integer before sending.
   5. Hash the integer before sending.

4. Question 4

   Consider the following code snippet (pseudocode): `if (request.getParameter('order') == 'name') { sortBy(name); }`. What security risk does this code pose if the 'order' parameter is not validated?

   1. SQL Injection
   2. Command Injection
   3. LDAP Injection
   4. Path Traversal
   5. XSS

5. Question 5

   What is the principle of 'least privilege' and how does it apply to API security?

   1. Granting all API users administrative access for simplicity.
   2. Granting API users only the minimum necessary permissions to perform their tasks.
   3. Restricting API access to only internal network users.
   4. Using the shortest possible passwords for API authentication.
   5. Regularly changing API keys even without known breaches.

6. Question 6

   Which of the following is NOT a common method for validating API input data?

   1. Whitelisting allowed characters.
   2. Blacklisting disallowed characters.
   3. Regular expression matching.
   4. Schema validation (e.g., using JSON Schema).
   5. Ignoring all input validation and trusting the client.

7. Question 7

   Why is it important to sanitize data even after it has been validated?

   1. Validation is sufficient and sanitization is unnecessary.
   2. Different parts of the application may have different security requirements, requiring sanitization for specific contexts (e.g., HTML output).
   3. Sanitization is only necessary for database inputs, not other parts of the application.
   4. Sanitization improves API performance.
   5. Sanitization is only required for legacy applications.

8. Question 8

   Which of the following is a common defense against SQL injection attacks?

   1. Using prepared statements or parameterized queries.
   2. Disabling database logging.
   3. Allowing direct user input in SQL queries.
   4. Using a weak database password.
   5. Exposing database credentials in client-side code.

9. Question 9

   What is the purpose of input encoding (e.g., URL encoding, HTML encoding)?

   1. To compress data for faster transmission.
   2. To convert data into a format suitable for transmission or storage, preventing interpretation as code.
   3. To encrypt data for security.
   4. To obfuscate data to hide it from attackers.
   5. To reduce the size of data stored in the database.

10. Question 10

    An API endpoint receives a file upload. Which of the following validation steps is MOST important from a security perspective?

    1. Checking the file size to prevent large uploads.
    2. Validating the file extension against an allowed list.
    3. Scanning the file content for malware.
    4. Storing the file outside the webroot.
    5. All of the above.