UUID Security Guide: Are UUIDs Safe as Public IDs?
Assess UUID security for public APIs and URLs. Learn the risks of predictable v1 UUIDs, enumeration attacks, and when to use opaque tokens instead.
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Tags: developer-tools, uuid, security
UUID Security Guide: Are UUIDs Safe to Use as Public Identifiers? Developers often use UUIDs as resource identifiers in URLs and APIs: . The assumption is that because the ID is unguessable, it is safe to expose. That assumption is correct for UUID v4 — but it breaks for v1, v3, and v5, and it does not eliminate all security risks. This guide explains precisely when UUIDs are safe and when they are not. --- The Core Security Question When you expose a resource ID in a URL, two questions determine whether it is safe: Can an attacker enumerate or guess valid IDs? Does the ID itself leak sensitive information? For UUID v4, the answer to both is: practically no. For other UUID versions, the answers are more nuanced. --- UUID v4: Random Guessing Infeasibility UUID v4 has 122 bits of random…
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