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Advanced AttacksMedium Severity

GraphQL Introspection Scanner

Exploits enabled GraphQL introspection for schema disclosure.

What is GraphQL Introspection?

GraphQL Introspection is a built-in feature that allows querying the schema itself—discovering all types, fields, queries, mutations, and their relationships. While useful for development, leaving introspection enabled in production exposes the entire API structure to attackers, revealing potential attack vectors.

Why is This Important?

Introspection provides attackers with a complete API roadmap. They learn every query, mutation, and field including internal/admin endpoints, deprecated fields, hidden features, and data relationships. This accelerates reconnaissance dramatically and reveals attack surfaces that wouldn't be discovered through normal usage.

How It Works

1. Attack Surface Mapping

Identifies complex attack vectors including race conditions, desync points, and logic flaws in your application.

2. Advanced Exploitation

Executes sophisticated attack techniques that bypass traditional security controls and detection mechanisms.

3. Impact Assessment

Demonstrates real-world impact with detailed exploitation chains and business risk analysis.

Key Capabilities

Expert-level security testing for sophisticated vulnerabilities that evade traditional scanning tools.

  • Race condition and timing attack detection
  • Request smuggling and desync analysis
  • Business logic flaw identification
  • Chained exploit development
  • Protocol-level vulnerability testing

Frequently Asked Questions

What information does introspection reveal?

Introspection exposes: all query and mutation types, every field and its arguments, all custom types and their structures, deprecation information (hints at evolution), directives, and relationships between types. It's essentially complete API documentation for attackers.

How do attackers use introspection?

Attackers: discover admin mutations (deleteUser, changeRole), find hidden fields (internalId, debugInfo), identify authorization fields to target, understand data models for injection, find deprecated endpoints with weaker security, and build complete API clients.

Isn't disabling introspection security through obscurity?

Partially, but it's valuable defense in depth. Attackers can still fuzz and discover the API, but introspection gives them everything instantly. Disabling it forces manual discovery, buying time and making attacks more detectable. It's not sufficient alone but is recommended.

How do I properly secure GraphQL introspection?

In production: disable introspection entirely, or restrict it to authenticated admins. Use field-level authorization regardless. Consider tools that detect introspection bypass attempts. If clients need schema info, provide it through secure, authenticated channels, not the live API.

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