No encryption protects that layer. The router can read, change, or replace anything.

We are moving to disable the usage of unrestricted API keys in the Gemini API, should have more updates there soon.

Google spent over a decade telling developers that Google API keys (like those used in Maps, Firebase, etc.) are not secrets. But that's no longer true.

Go is introducing publicly-visible API changes related to these issues in an upcoming major release, which risks making the vulnerabilities public without explicit public disclosure. 

This is useful if just a subset of the operations need the API key

PI keys are supposed to be a secret that only the client and server know. Like Basic authentication, API key-based authentication is only considered secure if used together with other security mechanisms such as HTTPS/SSL

API keys are generally not considered secure; they are typically accessible to clients, making it easy for someone to steal an API key. Once the key is stolen, it has no expiration, so it may be used indefinitely, unless the project owner revokes or regenerates the key

Cloud Endpoints handles both API keys and authentication schemes, such as Firebase or Auth0

Access control for GCP APIs encompasses authentication, authorization, and auditing. Authentication determines who you are, authorization determines what you can do, and auditing logs record what you did

For each call to your API, user should send token with every API request and you should validate the encoded toke and either deny or send back the response.