This free online penetration testing and white hat course shows you how to audit, recon, pentest, hack and secure APIs.

API (application programming interface) is a protocol that permits two applications or apps to connect and communicate with one another to use their services, software libraries, and databases. If you book a ride service today or look at your smartwatch to check your steps, you are using an API. Also, all the eye-catching dynamic content on the Web makes use of web APIs, the most common type of API. This is a very large and growing industry: Salesforce, a cloud-based software company, alone makes billions of US dollars every year by selling APIs.

This hands-on training course gives you the practical knowledge and skills you need to ethically pentest APIs. It includes practical labs, instruction, and resource repositories. Ethical hacking or pentesting involves testing to discover security bugs, and improving and fixing them. API pentesters can access sensitive databases, conduct DDoS attacks (distributed denial of service), modify APIs, inject malicious queries, hack the operating system and software directories, and much more.

APIs are primarily used in services such as location, medical information, security, financial transactions, video streaming, social media, news, Google calendar and much more. Many organizations and businesses function on APIs; this makes pentesters who are able to discover and fix security vulnerabilities very useful. APIs are an important and integral part of our life. Imagine, if they fall into the wrong hands! This course will lay the foundation needed to get started with your API pentesting journey toward becoming a CEH (certified ethical hacker). Pentesting experts are well-paid and have the opportunity to work in a variety of institutions.