How do you enable least-privilege access for API rate limiting?

Enabling least-privilege access for API rate limiting is a fundamental practice to protect your APIs while ensuring that users have the minimum necessary permissions to function. This approach reduces the risk of abuse and enhances overall security.

To implement this, you should first categorize your API users based on their roles and assign different rate limits according to their needs. Here’s a PHP example demonstrating how to set up rate limiting with least-privilege access:

<?php // Function to check user role and apply rate limits function applyRateLimit($userRole) { $rateLimits = [ 'admin' => 1000, // 1000 requests per minute 'user' => 100, // 100 requests per minute 'guest' => 10 // 10 requests per minute ]; // Default to 10 requests/min for unrecognized roles $limit = isset($rateLimits[$userRole]) ? $rateLimits[$userRole] : $rateLimits['guest']; // Functionality to handle the rate limiting logic... // (e.g. check current request count and time, block if over the limit) } // Example usage $currentUserRole = 'user'; // This should come from your authentication system applyRateLimit($currentUserRole); ?>

In this example, we define different rate limits for different user roles, ensuring that each user only has access to the API as much as their role allows. This helps to maintain control and prevents potential abuse.