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SQL Injection involves entering SQL code into web forms, eg. login
fields, or into the browser address field, to access and manipulate the
database behind the site, system or application.
When you enter text in the Username and Password fields of a login
screen, the data you input is typically inserted into an SQL command.
This command checks the data you’ve entered against the relevant
table in the database. If your input matches table/row data, you’re
granted access (in the case of a login screen). If not, you’re knocked
back out.
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The Simple SQL Injection Hack
In its simplest form, this is how the SQL Injection works. It’s
impossible to explain this without reverting to code for just a moment.
Don’t worry, it will all be over soon.
Suppose we enter the following string in a Username field:
’ OR 1=1
The authorization SQL query that is run by the server, the command
which must be satisfied to allow access, will be something along the
lines of:
SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ‘USRTEXT ’
AND password = ‘PASSTEXT’
…where USRTEXT and PASSTEXT are what the user enters in the login
fields of the web form.
So entering `OR 1=1 — as your username, could result in the
following actually being run:
SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ‘’ OR 1=1 — ‘AND
password = ‘’
Two things you need to know about this:
[‘] closes the [username] text field.
‘ ’ is the SQL convention for Commenting code, and everything after
Comment is ignored. So the actual routine now becomes:
SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ” OR 1=1
1 is always equal to 1, last time I checked. So the authorization
routine is now validated, and we are ushered in the front door to wreck
havoc.
Let’s hope you got the gist of that, and move briskly on.
Brilliant! I’m gonna go hack me a Bank!
Slow down, cowboy. This half-cooked method won’t beat the systems
they have in place up at Citibank, evidently.
But the process does serve to illustrate just what SQL Injection is all
about — injecting code to manipulate a routine via a form, or indeed
via the URL. In terms of login bypass via Injection, the hoary old ’ OR
1=1 is just one option. If a hacker thinks a site is vulnerable, there
are cheat-sheets all over the web for login strings which can gain
access to weak systems. Here are a couple more common strings
which are used to dupe SQL validation routines:
username field examples:
• admin’—
• ’) or (‘a’=’a
• ”) or (“a”=”a
• hi” or “a”=”a
… and so on.
Backdoor Injection- Modules, Forums, Search etc.
Hacking web forms is by no means limited exclusively to login screens.
A humble search form, for instance, is necessarily tied to a database,
and can potentially be used to amend database details. Using SQL
commands in search forms can potentially do some extremely powerful
things, like calling up usernames and passwords, searching the
database field set and field names, and amending same. Do people
really get hacked through their search forms? You better believe it.
And through forums, and anywhere else a user can input text into a
field which interacts with the database. If security is low enough, the
hacker can probe the database to get names of fields, then use
commands like INSERT INTO, UNION, and so forth to get user
information, change product prices, change account settings/balances,
and just about anything else… depending on the security measures in
place, database architecture and so on.
So you can have security locked down at the login, but poor security
on other forms can still be exploited. Unfortunately this is a real worry
regarding 3rd party modules for Web CMS products which incorporate
forms, and for CMS products these 3rd party modules are often the
weakest links which allows hackers access to your database.
Automated Injection
There are tools to automate the process of SQL Injection into login and
other fields. One hacker process, using a specific tool, will be to seek
out a number of weak targets using Google (searching for login.asp,
for instance), then insert a range of possible injection strings (like
those listed above, culled from innumerable Injection cheat-sheets on
the Web), add a list of proxies to cover his movements, and go play
XBox while the program automates the whole injection process.
Remote Injection
This involves uploading malicious files to inject SQL and exploit other
vulnerabilities. It’s a topic which was deemed beyond the scope of this
report, but you can view this PDF if you’d like to learn more.
SQL Injection in the Browser Address Bar
Injections can also be performed via the browser address bar. I don’t
mean to have a pop at Microsoft, but when it comes to such
vulnerabilities, HTTP GET requests with URLs of the following form are
most often held to be vulnerable:
http://somesite.com/index.asp?id=10
Try adding an SQL command to the end of a URL string like this, just
for kicks:
http://somesite.com/index.asp?id=10 AND id=11
See if both articles come up. Don’t shoot your webmaster just yet if
it’s your own site and you get two articles popping up: this is real low-
level access to the database. But some such sites will be vulnerable.
Try adding some other simple SQL commands to the end of URLs from
your own site, to see what happens.
As we saw above, access to the database raises a number of
interesting possibilities. The database structure can be mapped by a
skilled hacker through ill-conceived visibility of error messages — this
is called database footprinting — and then this knowledge of table
names and so forth can be used to gain access to additional data.
Revealing error messages are manna - they can carry invaluable table
name and structural details.
The following illustrative string is from Imperva.
http://www.mydomain.com/products/products.asp?productid=123
UNION SELECT username, password FROM USERS
There are vast swathes of information on SQL Injection available, here
are a couple of good sources:
• GovernmentSecurity.org
• SecurityDocs.com
Stealing cookies is just the tip of the iceberg though — XSS attacks
through links and through embedded code on a page or even a bb post
can do a whole lot more, with a little imagination.
XSS is mostly of concern to consumers and to developers of web
applications. It’s the family of security nightmares which keeps people
like MySpace Tom and Mark Zuckerberg awake at night. So they’re not
all bad then, I suppose…
For additional resources on this topic, here’s a great overview of XSS
(PDF) and just what can be accomplished with sneaky links. And here’s
an in-depth XSS video.
Authorization Bypass
Authorization Bypass is a frighteningly simple process which can be
employed against poorly designed applications or content management
frameworks. You know how it is… you run a small university and you
want to give the undergraduate students something to do. So they
build a content management framework for the Mickey Bags research
department. Trouble is that this local portal is connected to other more
important campus databases. Next thing you know, there goes the
farm
Authorization bypass, to gain access to the Admin backend, can be as
simple as this:
• Find weak target login page.
• View source. Copy to notepad.
• Delete the authorization javascript, amend a link or two.
• Save to desktop.
• Open on desktop. Enter anything into login fields, press enter.
• Hey Presto.
Here’s a great video of a White Hat going through the authorization-
bypass process on YouTube. This was done against a small university’s
website. It’s a two-minute process. Note that he gets into the User 1
account, which is not the Admin account in this case. Is Admin User 1
on your User table?
Google Hacking
This is by far the easiest hack of all. It really is extraordinary what you
can find in Google’s index. And here’s Newsflash #1: you can find a
wealth of actual usernames and passwords using search strings.
Copy and paste these into Google:
inurl:passlist.txt
inurl:passwd.txt
…and this one is just priceless…
“login: *” “password= *” filetype:xls
Such strings return very random results, and are of little use for
targeted attacks. Google hacking will primarily be used for finding sites
with vulnerabilities. If a hacker knows that, say, SQL Server 2000 has
certain exploits, and he knows a unique string pushed out by that
version in results, you can hone in on vulnerable websites.
For specific targets Google can return some exceptionally useful
information: full server configurations, database details (so a good
hacker knows what kind of injections might work), and so forth. You
can find any amount of SQL database dumps as well (fooling around
with a Google hack while preparing this article, I stumbled across a
dump for a top-tier CMS developer’s website). And a vast amount
more besides.
johnny.ihackstuff.com is the man to go to for Google hacks. One
interesting one I toyed with invited me to the Joomla! install page for
dozens of sites… people who had uploaded Joomla!, decided against
installing it, and subsequently had either left the domain to rot, or else
set a redirect on the page to, say, their Flickr account (in one case).
Allowing anybody to walk in and run through the installer. Other query
strings target unprotected email/IM archives, and all sorts of very
sensitive information. What fun we can have!
Password Cracking
Hashed strings can often be deciphered through ‘brute forcing’. Bad
news, eh? Yes, and particularly if your encrypted
passwords/usernames are floating around in an unprotected file
somewhere, and some Google hacker comes across it.
You might think that just because your password now looks something
like XWE42GH64223JHTF6533H in one of those files, it means that it
can’t be cracked? Wrong. Tools are freely available which will decipher
a certain proportion of hashed and similarly encoded passwords.
Comments
I appreciate that you've presented this information in a form that less
tech-savvy users can understand. However, there are a few issues I
have as a professional programmer with some of the solutions
presented.
Also, your first two defense measures suggested updating versions 'as
soon as possible.' In general, unless a patch is specifically fixing a
large security error, this is not a good idea, because new code
introduces new vulnerabilities. If you updated your codebase simply
because a new version came out, what are you going to do if a major
exploit is found in the new version two days later? It's better to wait a
little to be sure that the new version is stable, especially if valuable
information is at stake.
Thanks for your time.. this is not meant to be overly critical, this
article is good overall, just trying to help out! :)
My two cents.
Thanks everyone. And great feedback Jason -- thanks for taking the
time. On the subject of updating modules, yes: perhaps it's better to
say that you should "update your modules", rather than say that it
should be done ASAP.
Thanks for a good read. You're the first one I've come across that was
able to explain XSS for the simple concept that it is.
Great article. But wonder how many of guys see this and close the
holes. Well...it worked most of the time.
Could you call it 'cracking' and not 'hacking'? For instance, I hack the
GNU core utilities to improve them, this involves no wrong doing and
helps my neighbor.
Please stop saying 'hacking' when wrong doing is implied, else GNU
and Kernel hackers will have to come up with a new term. This would
be sad, as our motivation to do what we did was to help our hacker
community.
I don't care what using 'hacking' does for you SEO, consider the
damage that your doing to the community that built the OS that
powers this blog.
Its an interview with RMS (the guy who wrote gcc and the core utilities
that you now call 'Linux').
Cheers,
--Tim
Great article , really enjoyed it. The information is rather basic but I
hope all the webmasters reading this have closed any holes. It amazes
me how many sites lack any real security !
Wow, thanks for explaining the process to a non tech. I have heard of
sql injection before but didn't quite understand what it really was
before reading your article.
This seems to have worked just fine so far, after months of constant
backing up and restoring at least once a week on both sites, they
haven't been hacked in a month, although I am logging attempts and
there have been many.
Anyway well written 101 article and thanks for the info!
Nice Info!
For the "Authorization Bypass" section, you do not even need to save
the HTML source anymore. You can make modifications on the page if
you run plugins such as Firebug on Firefox. Even the HTTP-Referer
header will be correct!
i am not eable to open orkut bec in our collage there is url or page has
been bloked.
Posted by: dhavni on October 13, 2008 4:59 AM
Excellent article and wonderful feedback from all. Very refreshing and
simplified.
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