Mapping the GraphQL Attack Surface: Schema Enumeration, Batch Abuse, Resolver Explosions

Over the past few months I've been researching GraphQL security and attack surfaces, particularly patterns that show up in bug bounty reports and real-world APIs.

I wrote a deep dive covering three issues that frequently appear in GraphQL implementations:

• Schema enumeration – discovering hidden fields and operations even when introspection is disabled
• Batch abuse – abusing batched queries for large-scale enumeration
• Resolver explosions – crafting queries that trigger exponential resolver execution and potential DoS

The article explains how these attacks work and why they often bypass naive defenses.

Would be interested in hearing how teams here approach securing GraphQL APIs in production.

Article:
https://medium.com/@ommkoli00/mapping-the-graphql-attack-surface-schema-enumeration-batch-abuse-and-resolver-explosions-285714610185

Comments

[Om Koli]

This research led to the development of gqls, a GraphQL security scanner. : github.com/omkoli/GQLS-CLI