You’ve heard the pitch: Agentic AI will revolutionize your workflows, automate your thinking, and probably walk your dog if you ask nicely.
But here’s the fine print no one wants to read: your APIs are about to get wrecked.
Wallarm just dropped their Q1 2025 API Threat Report, and it’s basically the cybersecurity version of a horror movie. If you’re experimenting with agentic AI, there’s one stat you need to tattoo onto your internal wiki:
65% of all security issues in Agentic AI code repos are API-related.
Let that sink in. Not flaky models. Not bad prompts. APIs. The pipes. The plumbing. The very thing that makes your AI talk to anything useful.
We’ve Been Here Before
Agentic AI isn’t magical. It’s still code. And code has attack surfaces. The problem is, agentic systems are like overachieving interns who try to do everything: fetch data, call APIs, make decisions. Great for productivity, terrible for exposure.
Wallarm dug into GitHub issues going back to 2019 and found thousands of unpatched vulnerabilities. Some have been open for 1,200+ days. That’s over three years of “meh, we’ll fix it later.”
Meanwhile, attackers are having a field day:
• Breaches across Oracle Cloud, Volkswagen, NHS UK, Microsoft, and more
• 700+ open issues in agentic AI repos still unaddressed
• 60% of vulnerabilities tied to access control
Why This Matters
APIs aren’t just part of the attack surface. They are the attack surface.
Every time your AI agent calls an endpoint, that’s a handshake with risk. And if your access control is flimsy or your endpoint discovery is outdated, congratulations, you’ve just given a curious agent the keys to the kingdom. Or worse, to someone else’s.
What You Should Be Doing (Like, Yesterday)
If you’re leading AI adoption or even just dabbling in agentic workflows:
• Update your threat models to reflect how agents interact with APIs
• Audit your API exposure, including shadow endpoints and legacy leftovers
• Monitor API traffic in real time, especially for anomalous calls
• Patch access control gaps like it’s your full-time job
• Treat APIs like prod code – because they are
And if you’re still not sure what agentic AI is doing under the hood? That’s your first vulnerability.
Final Thought
We love to talk about AI alignment like it’s some philosophical debate. But sometimes, alignment just means “don’t let your AI call unsecured endpoints at 3 a.m.”
Agentic AI can absolutely transform how work gets done. But if your APIs aren’t locked down, it won’t be your AI doing the disrupting, it’ll be whoever breaks in first.