BGPMon Wrapper (Python) and Remembering Your Permissions

This weekend I decided to write a simple little wrapper for BGPMon's SOAP API (because I love and care about the well-being of other humans). It's available on Github and through PyPi. Though funny enough, there was a security lesson to be learned from this experience, as there usually is.

I didn't start off writing an API, I initially logged in to the client portal to see what this site was all about since I stumbled upon it for the first time on Friday. As it turns out, it's a tool for monitoring Autonomous Systems and their activity on the Internets, neat! I sprung into action.

According to the client portal for the demo account, API access is only allowed premium accounts, which the demo is not, rats, foiled. But wait, I noticed this information after I had already gotten working test code.

Incidentally, the developer of the site had previously enabled full API access to the demo account, double neat! Approximately 80 lines of code (and several infuriating hours trying to figure out PyPi) later, I have a working API wrapper which is ready to be used by anyone who may find it useful. I intentionally have not tested functions such as adding and removing alerts, AS, etc. and the developer has since disabled the API access of the demo account.

Always double check permissions, folks!