Broken Object Level Authorization in the Wild: An Empirical Taxonomy from 100+ Bug Bounty Disclosures

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2605.25865v1
• Date: Mon, 25 May 2026 13:55:24 GMT
• Title: Broken Object Level Authorization in the Wild: An Empirical Taxonomy from 100+ Bug Bounty Disclosures
• Abstract summary: Broken Object Level Authorization (ABOL) is consistently ranked the most critical API security vulnerability.<n>This paper presents one of the first large-scale empirical analyses of BOLA in publicly disclosed bug bounty reports.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA) is consistently ranked the most critical API security vulnerability, yet the existing literature remains almost entirely conceptual. This paper presents one of the first large-scale empirical analyses of BOLA in publicly disclosed bug bounty reports. We constructed a reproducible sampling frame of 200 HackerOne disclosures tagged IDOR or Improper Access Control (2021-2026) and applied a three-criterion inclusion filter, yielding 107 fully classified reports. Classification used an LLM-assisted schema-completion procedure under constrained, human-adjudicated criteria against a six-family BOLA taxonomy. Of 107 classified reports, 84 (78.5%) were confirmed in-scope BOLA. Action-Level Object BOLA, defined by unauthorized state-changing actions on another user's objects, accounts for 41.7% of confirmed cases and emerges alongside Direct Object Reference BOLA as one of the two dominant families observed in the dataset. This shows a pattern historically underrepresented in practitioner guidance. Approximately 21.5% of classified reports are out-of-scope under strict criteria, indicating that tag-counting on platforms like HackerOne significantly overstates the BOLA-specific signal. We report distributions across family, action type, authorization direction, industry sector, identifier format, and exploit mechanism. Key secondary findings include an 11.9% rate of vertical (user-to-admin) privilege failures and systematic exploitation of GraphQL Global IDs across major platforms. Findings have direct implications for API security testing protocols, developer education, and OWASP guidance.

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