While testing a SaaS project-management API, you successfully retrieve your own project at /api/v1/projects/357 using a valid session cookie. To confirm whether horizontal authorization controls are missing, which modification to the captured request should you perform next?
Add the header X-Forwarded-For: 127.0.0.1 hoping the server will treat the request as internal.
Change the HTTP method from GET to OPTIONS to check for supported verbs.
Remove the Session cookie header entirely and resend the request to observe the server's default response.
Replace the project ID 357 with another sequential value such as 358 to see if data from a different account is returned.
Changing the object identifier in the URI is the quickest way to test whether authorization is enforced for each resource. If the application returns data for /api/v1/projects/358 even though your user is not associated with that project, it demonstrates an insecure direct object reference (IDOR) and horizontal privilege escalation. Simply removing the session cookie should generate an unauthenticated error, not prove an authorization flaw. Switching to the OPTIONS verb only enumerates methods and does not challenge authorization logic, while spoofing X-Forwarded-For relies on a misconfigured IP trust list rather than object-level access control.
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