Banking Use Case — Open Banking APIs, From “All Clear” to Audit-Ready in 10 Days
A digital bank told us: “Scanner said clean.” We found a BOLA that moved money between accounts.
Challenge: 42 Open Banking APIs going live in 3 weeks. Scanner: 0 criticals. But the bank’s QSA needed pen-test evidence for PCI DSS 4.0 Req 11.3 and BOLA/BFLA coverage per OWASP API Top 10. No time for a 6-week test.
Solution — Snipeyes API Pen-Test (10-day SLA):
- Scoping workshop (90 min) with mobile + API team — mapped auth flows, not just endpoints
- Manual BOLA/BFLA, IDOR, mass assignment — chained 2 lows into account takeover, with PoC
- Report: 1-page board risk + 18 findings (ranked by exploitability), mapped to PCI DSS, SOC 2, ISO 27001 — plus free retest
Outcome:
- 1 critical chain fixed in 4 days, retest passed, QSA accepted first time
- 80% critical reduction at retest, no launch delay
- Now continuous: Auto PenTest on every API deploy
Why it mattered: One API flaw = fund diversion + regulator call. We proved it before attackers did.