Slide 3 of 28
Part 1 · What Is It?Slide 3
Slide 3 · The Definition — Part I
How does an API actually work?
You need to understand this before BOLA makes sense.
📄 OWASP API Security Top 10 · 2023 · API1
Old way — Web App

You click "My Orders" on a website. The server looks up your session, finds your account, pulls your orders, and builds an HTML page just for you. The server decides what you see. You never see an ID. You never touch the query.

New way — API

Your phone app wants your orders. It sends a request: GET /api/orders/1042. The server receives that ID — 1042 — and fetches whatever order has that number. The client is telling the server exactly what to fetch.

The shift that created BOLA

When we moved from server-rendered web pages to APIs, we handed control of what gets requested to the client. The client now sends the ID. If the server just fetches whatever ID it receives — without checking if you own it — anyone can request anything.

// The client sends this request GET /api/orders/1042 Authorization: Bearer your-token-here // The server has two jobs: // 1. Verify the token (are you logged in?) // 2. Check if order 1042 is yours // BOLA = job #2 never happens
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