[opensourcedex]

akto is a free, open source ai security & privacy project written in Java and released under MIT. It has 1,516 GitHub stars, 292 forks and 347 open issues, and was last pushed 7 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #21 of 34 tracked projects in AI Security & Privacy, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available.

What is akto?

What it is

Akto is an open-source Java project under the MIT license. Its metadata presents it as an AI security platform for teams that secure AI agents, MCPs, LLMs, Agent skills, and Gen AI apps, while its README describes it as an open-source API security platform. It lives in the open-source API security and AI security ecosystem.

Akto solves a concrete problem for security and engineering teams that need a continuous inventory of APIs, tests for vulnerabilities, and visibility into runtime issues. The README says it offers coverage for OWASP top 10 and HackerOne Top 10 categories, including BOLA, authentication, SSRF, XSS, and security configurations. Its testing engine reads traffic data to understand API traffic patterns, which can reduce false positives, and it integrates with multiple traffic sources such as Burp Suite, AWS, Postman, GCP, and gateways.

Key capabilities

  • Akto maintains continuous API inventory and API collections.
  • Akto runs business logic tests in CI/CD using traffic data to understand API traffic patterns.
  • Akto provides coverage for OWASP top 10 and HackerOne Top 10 categories, including BOLA, authentication, SSRF, XSS, and security configurations.
  • Akto integrates with multiple traffic sources, including Burp Suite, AWS, Postman, GCP, and gateways.
  • Akto's topics include AI security, guardrails, red-teaming, OWASP Agentic Top 10, OWASP LLM Top 10, and OWASP MCP Top 10.

Who uses it and how

  • Security teams use Akto to maintain a continuous inventory of APIs and find runtime issues.
  • Engineering and security teams run business logic tests in CI/CD to validate API behavior.
  • Teams can mirror application traffic into a cloud deployment, which the README says makes Akto more powerful with 0 performance impact and supports scheduled tests and dashboard collaboration.

Getting started

Users can install Akto with Docker Compose by cloning the repository and running docker-compose up -d. For cloud setups, it recommends restricting inbound access to port 9090, using a private subnet or VPN tunnel, and visiting http://private-instance:9090.

When to use it — and when not to

It is a good fit when teams need open-source API inventory, traffic-based testing, and runtime vulnerability discovery, while Akto Enterprise is mentioned for cloud deployments with mirrored traffic, CI/CD scheduling, and invited team members. A self-hoster must operate Docker Compose, secure port 9090, and cloud network access such as private subnets or VPN tunneling. The README's detailed capabilities center on API security rather than AI-specific testing, so teams with advanced AI security requirements should confirm those workflows separately.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Akto.io API Security

Contributors

What is Akto?

How it works • Getting-Started • API Inventory • API testing • Add Test • Join Discord community •

Akto is an instant, open source API security platform that takes only 60 secs to get started. Akto is used by security teams to maintain a continuous inventory of APIs, test APIs for vulnerabilities and find runtime issues. Akto offers coverage for all OWASP top 10 and HackerOne Top 10 categories including BOLA, authentication, SSRF, XSS, security configurations, etc. Akto's powerful testing engine runs variety of business logic tests by reading traffic data to understand API traffic pattern leading to reduced false positives. Akto can integrate with multiple traffic sources - burpsuite, AWS, postman, GCP, gateways, etc. Here is our public roadmap for this quarter.

Akto enables security and engineering teams to secure their APIs by doing three things:

  1. API inventory
  2. Run business logic tests in CI/CD
  3. Find vulnerabilities in run-time

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/91306853/216407351-d18c396b-5cd0-4cbc-a350-10a76b1d67b3.mp4

How it works?

Step 1: Create inventory

Step 2: Run tests

How to get Started?

Using docker-compose (works for any machine which has Docker installed)

Run the following commands to install Akto. You'll need to have curl and Docker installed in order to run the container..

  1. Clone the Akto repo by using this command git clone https://github.com/akto-api-security/akto.git
  2. Go to the cloned directory cd akto
  3. Run docker-compose up -d

If you are setting this up in your own Cloud (AWS/GCP/Heroku), read this section

Please ensure the following for good security practices

  1. Open inbound security rule for port 9090 only. And restrict the source CIDR to VPC CIDR or your IP only.

  2. Use an EC2 from a private subnet -

    a. This way, no one will be able to make an inbound request to your machine.

    b. Ensure this private subnet has access to Internet so that outbound calls can succeed!

    c. You might have to set up tunneling to access instance via VPN using ssh -i pemfile ec2-user@vpn-public-instance -L 9090:private-instance:9090

    d. In your browser, visit http://private-instance:9090

  3. Use an EC2 from a public subnet - please don't! If you still want to do this, you can skip 2.b and 2.c. Simply access your instance via http://ip:9090

Akto is really powerful in Cloud deployment if you can provide your application's mirrored traffic (0 performance impact). You would also be able to schedule tests in CI/CD and invite more team members on the dashboard. For that, you should install Akto Enterprise edition available here. Read more about it here

API Security testing tutorials

Title Link
Introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFt4OVmfE2s
Tutorial 1: SSRF Port Scanning (OWASP API7:2023) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjNNh6asAD0

Develop and contribute

Quicksetup using VSCode Devcontainers

Prerequisites:

  1. Install VSCode
  2. Install VSCode Dev Containers extension
  3. Windows: Docker Desktop 2.0+ on Windows 10 Pro/Enterprise. Windows 10 Home (2004+) requires Docker Desktop 2.3+ and the WSL 2 back-end.
  4. macOS: Docker Desktop 2.0+.
  5. Linux: Docker CE/EE 18.06+ and Docker Compose 1.21+.

Note: If using Docker Desktop, consider changing the memory allocation to 8 GB for better performance

Steps:

Clone repo and open in vscode
  1. Open terminal
  2. mkdir ~/akto_code
  3. cd ~/akto_code
  4. git clone https://github.com/akto-api-security/akto
  5. Open in VScode: code akto
Start Dev Container
  1. Go to View > Command Palette and type: Dev Containers: Reopen in Container

2. Wait for the Dev Container to set up. 3. Open localhost:9090 in your web browser to see the Akto dashboard

Manual Setup Instructions

Prerequisites

OpenJDK 8, node(v18.7.0+ link), npm(v8.15.0+), maven (v3.6.3 link), MongoDB (v5.0.3+ link)

Clone repo
  1. mkdir ~/akto_code
  2. cd akto_code
  3. git clone https://github.com/akto-api-security/akto
Setup database
  1. Open a new terminal tab
  2. cd ~
  3. mkdir ~/akto_mongo_data
  4. /bin/mongod --dbpath ~/akto_mongo_data
Setup Frontend
  1. Open a new terminal tab
  2. cd ~/akto_code/akto
  3. cd apps/dashboard/web/polaris_web
  4. npm install
  5. npm run hot
Setup Dashboard
  1. Open a new terminal tab
  2. cd ~/akto_code/akto
  3. export AKTO_M
  4. export DASHBOARD_MODE="local_deploy"
  5. mvn clean install
  6. mvn --projects :dashboard --also-make jetty:run -Djetty.port=9090
Setup Testing
  1. Open a new terminal tab
  2. cd ~/akto_code/akto
  3. cd apps/testing
  4. export AKTO_M
  5. `mvn compile; mvn exec:java -Dexec.mainClass="com.

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is akto free to use?

akto is open source under the MIT licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does akto do?

Akto is the fastest growing AI Security platform for your teams to secure AI agents, MCPs, LLMs, Agent skills, Gen AI apps in your organization.

What is akto written in?

akto is primarily written in Java. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/akto-api-security/akto, and it has 1,516 GitHub stars.