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Interview question · Application & API Security

How do you secure a GraphQL API, and which REST habits stop working when every request goes to one endpoint?

GraphQL lets clients ask for exactly what they want, which includes things you did not mean to give them and queries that cost a thousand times a normal one. The scored answer moves controls to where GraphQL actually decides things.

mediumNewPreparation tags: Shopify, Meta, StripeUpdated Nov 2026

GraphQL lets clients ask for exactly what they want, which includes things you did not mean to give them and queries that cost a thousand times a normal one. The scored answer moves controls to where GraphQL actually decides things.

Make your first attempt

What would you say before reading the answer?

  1. 01 State the assumptions your answer depends on.
  2. 02 Explain the mechanism and choose a control.
  3. 03 Name a condition that would change your decision.

The worked answer includes an approach, scoring criteria and follow-up questions. Compare the reasoning with your own.

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What if · the follow-ups in this answer

The answer works through 4 follow-ups like an interviewer would

A mobile app's GraphQL API checks that the caller is logged in at the gateway. A researcher reports they can read other customers' delivery addresses, and separately that one request can try 500 discount codes.

  1. How can a logged-in user read other customers' addresses?
  2. How can one request try 500 discount codes?
  3. What structural change fixes both classes for this first-party app?
  4. How do you summarise GraphQL security?

Each rung has a nudge, a model answer, the principle that carries over and the weak answer to avoid. Premium opens every answer and ladder.

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