Hardening Your Web Application Against SQL Injections

[The information provided is for educationally purposes only and not to be used for malicious use]

Hi All,

Before digging what actually SQL Injection is, let me explain you what is SQL it self.

What is SQL?

Structured Query Language (SQL) is a specialized programming language for sending queries to databases. Most small and industrial- strength database applications can be accessed using SQL statements. SQL is both an ANSI and an ISO standard. However, many database products supporting SQL do so with proprietary extensions to the standard language. Web applications may use user-supplied input to create custom SQL statements for dynamic web page requests.

What is SQL Injection?

SQL injection is a technique that exploits a security vulnerability occurring in the database layer of a web application. The vulnerability is present when user input is either incorrectly filtered for string literal escape characters embedded in SQL statements or user input is not strongly typed and thereby unexpectedly executed. It is in fact an instance of a more general class of vulnerabilities that can occur whenever one programming or scripting language is embedded inside another.

“SQL Injection” is subset of the unverified/unsanitized user input vulnerability (“buffer overflows” are a different subset), and the idea is to convince the application to run SQL code that was not intended. If the application is creating SQL strings naively on the fly and then running them, it’s straightforward to create some real surprises.

Many organization’s web servers has been compromised just because of SQL Injections, including big names which I would not like to mention here, you can search it easily on Internet.

What is Blind SQL Injection?

This particular type of attack is called a blind SQL injection attack, because the attacker cannot take advantage of detailed error messages from the server or other sources of information about the application. Getting the SQL syntax right is usually the trickiest part of the blind SQL injection process and may require a lot of trial and error. But, by adding more conditions to the SQL statement and evaluating the Web application’s output, an attacker will eventually determine whether the application is vulnerable to SQL injection.

Blind SQL injection a special case that plays on the web developers or website owners sense of security. While they may think that everything on the server is tightly guarded a Blind SQL injection attack will silently be playing truth or consequences with the web server. This type of attack though very time consuming is one that provides the most potentially damaging security hole. This is because an attacker gets not only access but is provided with an enormous amount of knowledge about the database and can potentially gain access to a servers file system. This type of attack is one that is automated and requires good amount of setup to succeed. But once it is done it does not require a great deal of effort to repeat.

What is Error message SQL Injection?

Web applications commonly use SQL queries with client-supplied input in the WHERE clause to retrieve data from a database. When a Web application executes such queries without validating or scanning the user-supplied data to ensure it’s not harmful, a SQL injection attack can occur. By sending unexpected data, an attacker can generate and submit SQL queries to a web applications database. A test for SQL injection vulnerabilities takes place by sending the application data that generates an invalid SQL query. If the server returns an error message, that information can be used to try to gain uncontrolled access to the database. This is the basis of one of the most popular SQL injection attacks.

Hiding error messages does not stop the SQL injection attack. What typically happens is the attacker will use the knowledge gained from the failure of this attack to change tactics. What they turn to is blind SQL injection.

Why SQL Injection?

When a web application fails to properly sanitize user-supplied input, it is possible for an attacker to alter the construction of backend SQL statements. When an attacker is able to modify a SQL statement, the process will run with the same permissions as the component that executed the command. (E.g. Database server, Web application server, Web server, etc.). The impact of this attack can allow attackers to gain total control of the database or even execute commands on the system.

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