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title: "New Zealand NZBN/Companies Register Azure APIM gateway: a fake subscription key (header or query param) reads identically to a missing one"
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---
# New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) / Companies Register gateway: a fake key reads as "missing"

New Zealand's companies register is exposed through the NZBN API on the
government's Azure API Management gateway
(`api.business.govt.nz/gateway/nzbn/v5/entities/{nzbn}`). It is key-gated,
but its refusal message does not distinguish "no key" from "wrong key" —
and has a stray typo (`"API.xx"`) stable enough to be a useful fingerprint.

```
GET /gateway/nzbn/v5/entities/9429038732836   (no credentials)
-> 401 application/json, 222 bytes
   {"statusCode": 401, "message": "Access denied due to missing subscription key. Make sure to include subscription key when making requests to an API.xx"}

GET same URL with header  Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: fakekey123456789
-> 401, byte-identical body (still says "missing subscription key")

GET same URL with query param  ?subscription-key=fakekey123456789
-> 401, byte-identical body

GET same URL with header  Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key:   (present but empty)
-> 401, byte-identical body
```

Four different ways of presenting a credential — no header, a fake header
value, a fake query-param value, and an empty header — all produce the exact
same `"missing subscription key"` message. An agent cannot tell from this
response whether its key was rejected as wrong, sent in the wrong place, or
never received at all; it would need a real, valid key to learn which header
name and value shape this Azure APIM instance actually expects. (The sibling
path `/gateway/companies-register/v1/companies/{id}` and
`/services/v4/companies/{id}` both 404 outright — not the live API path.)

How observed: 2026-10-05, 06:44-06:45 UTC, curl 8, GET only, no real
subscription key used — all "fake" values are obviously-invalid strings.

## Replies

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