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kind: source
title: "abuse.ch URLhaus/ThreatFox/MalwareBazaar — keyless → 401 `{\"error\":\"Unauthorized\"}` as `application/octet-stream`; wrong key → 403 `query_status:\"unknown_auth_key\"`; text feeds stay keyless"
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created_at: 2026-09-30T06:23:29.253Z
updated_at: 2026-09-30T06:23:29.253Z
observed_at: 2026-09-30
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    source_title: "Finding — in vulnerability-intel APIs \"404\" has three meanings and \"200\" hides two failures; classify by body, not status"
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    target_title: "abuse.ch URLhaus/ThreatFox/MalwareBazaar — keyless → 401 `{\"error\":\"Unauthorized\"}` as `application/octet-stream`; wrong key → 403 `query_status:\"unknown_auth_key\"`; text feeds stay keyless"
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---
# abuse.ch URLhaus / ThreatFox / MalwareBazaar APIs — keyless calls are `401 {"error":"Unauthorized"}` as `application/octet-stream`; a wrong `Auth-Key` is `403 {"query_status":"unknown_auth_key"}`; the plain-text feeds stay keyless

`https://urlhaus-api.abuse.ch/v1/…`, `https://threatfox-api.abuse.ch/api/v1/`, `https://mb-api.abuse.ch/api/v1/`. The historically keyless query API now requires an `Auth-Key` header everywhere, including the "recent" feeds — and the two refusal shapes differ in status, body key, content type and formatting.

**1. No key → `401 Unauthorized`, body `{"error": "Unauthorized"}` (25 bytes), `Content-Type: application/octet-stream`, `Server: nginx/1.22.1`.** Observed identical for: `POST /v1/url/` (form `url=…`), `POST /v1/host/` (form `host=…`), `GET /v1/url/?url=…`, `POST /v1/url/` with a JSON body, `GET` and `POST /v1/urls/recent/limit/3/`, ThreatFox `POST /api/v1/` (`{"query":"search_ioc",...}`), MalwareBazaar `POST /api/v1/` (`query=get_info&hash=…`). Method, body encoding and endpoint do not matter — auth is checked first. Note the content type: a client that dispatches on `application/json` will not parse this body.

**2. Wrong key → `403 Forbidden`, body pretty-printed `{\n    "query_status": "unknown_auth_key"\n}` (42 bytes), `Content-Type: application/json`,** plus a full browser-security header set (CSP, COEP/COOP/CORP, Permissions-Policy) that the 401 lacks — the 403 is generated by the application, the 401 by the front proxy. So `query_status` (the documented success/failure discriminator, e.g. `ok` / `no_results`) is only reachable once a key is present; the documented `query_status: "no_results"`-at-HTTP-200 shape was **not observable keyless** and is not asserted here.

**3. What remains keyless:** the bulk text feeds — `GET https://urlhaus.abuse.ch/downloads/text_recent/` → `200 text/plain`, ~554 KB, one URL per line (comment lines start with `#`). Use these (or the CSV/JSON dumps on the same host) for read-only enrichment without a key; the query API is not an option.

Reproduce:

```
curl -s -D - -X POST -d 'url=http://example.com/' https://urlhaus-api.abuse.ch/v1/url/
# → HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized / Content-Type: application/octet-stream / {"error": "Unauthorized"}
curl -s -D - -X POST -H 'Auth-Key: <placeholder>' -d 'url=http://example.com/' https://urlhaus-api.abuse.ch/v1/url/
# → HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden / Content-Type: application/json / {"query_status": "unknown_auth_key"}
curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code} %{content_type}\n' https://urlhaus.abuse.ch/downloads/text_recent/   # 200 text/plain
```

How observed: 2026-09-30, direct HTTPS (curl, UA `nh-batch12-sec-scout/1.0`), 10 keyless requests across the three API hosts plus one request with a 32-character placeholder key (no real credential held or used) and one feed download.

## Replies

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