A SEMINAR REPORT ON CODE INJECTION ATTACK SQL INJECTION

MADONNA UNIVERSITY, ELELE CAMPUS
RIVERS STATE

A SEMINAR REPORT ON

CODE INJECTION ATTACK
(SQL INJECTION)

BY
OMAIYE BENJAMIN OHEPO

CS/12/006

SUBMITTED TO THE
 DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
FALCULTY OF SCIENCE


IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF BARCHELOR OF SCIENCE (B.Sc.)
DEGREE IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

DECEMBER, 2015.

SUPERVISED BY: MRS ADANMA CELIA EBERENDU




DECLARATION

This is to certify that this Seminar research on “Code Injection Attack (SQL Injection)” by CS/12/006 Omaiye Benjamin Ohepo has met the conditions for the award of Bachelor of Science (BSc.) degree in Computer Science, Madonna University Okija, Elele Campus. It is hereby approved for its contribution to knowledge.


 


OMAIYE BENJAMIN OHEPO                                                                DATE
              (Name of Student)

                                                   
MRS. EBERENDU ADAMMA .C.                                                             DATE
                 (Supervisor)               
                                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                        DATE
            (Head of Department)




DEDICATION
I dedicate this report firstly, to God Almighty for his infinite mercies that he has granted me throughout my stay in Madonna University, also to my family members and many friends. A special feeling of gratitude to my loving parents, Mr & Mrs Bernard Omaiye, my wonderful supervisor Mrs Adamma Celia Eberendu whose words of encouragement and push for tenacity ring in my ears. Finally I will like to also dedicate my seminar to Madonna University, my learned lecturers, wonderful course mates, and well-wishers for been there for me.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First and foremost I want to thank God Almighty for his infinite mercies and grace that kept me going throughout my studies. With high gratitude to my parents, Mr and Mrs Bernard Omaiye for their financial and moral support to ensure that my academic pursuit is a successful one. A special thanks to my supervisor Mrs Adamma Ace Eberendu with whom my seminar report was a success. Finally, I want to thank all the staffs and lecturers of Computer Science Department Madonna University, my course mates, friends and well-wishers that have contributed massively towards my academic pursuit.





Table of Contents

Chapter 1....................................................................................................................................6
Introduction................................................................................................................................6
1.1 Background of the Study......................................................................................................6
1.1.1 Application of Code Injection Attack...............................................................................7
1.1.2 Some Preventive Measures of Code injection Attacks.....................................................7
1.2 Problem Statement...............................................................................................................8
1.3 Aims & Objective................................................................................................................8
1.4 Significance of the Study.....................................................................................................8
1.5 Scope of Study.....................................................................................................................8
1.6 Limitations...........................................................................................................................9
1.7 Glossary.............................................................................................................................. 9
1.8 Organisation of the Chapters...............................................................................................10
Chapter 2...................................................................................................................................11
Literature Review..................................................................................................................... 11
Chapter 3...................................................................................................................................12
Findings.....................................................................................................................................12
3.1 Brief Understanding on SQL Injection Attack....................................................................12
3.2 Main Types of SQL Injection Mechanism..........................................................................12
3.3 Mode of Operation..............................................................................................................13
3.4 Preventive Measures of SQL injection Attacks..................................................................14
Chapter 4...................................................................................................................................16
Conclusion................................................................................................................................16
Reference




Abstract
Code Injection Attacks pose a serious security threat to operating system, web and database applications, they allow attackers to obtain unrestricted access to the databases underlying the applications and to the potentially sensitive information these databases contain. Although researchers and practitioners have proposed various methods to address this issue. Many researchers and practitioners are familiar with only a subset of the wide range of techniques available to attackers who are trying to take advantage of code injection attack vulnerabilities. As a consequence, the solutions proposed in the literature address only some of the issues related to code injection attack. To address this problem, a presentation of an extensive review of the different types of code injection attacks will be carried out. For each type of attack, a provision, descriptions and examples of how attacks of that type could be performed. More also presentation and analysis on existing prevention techniques against code injection attacks. This literature mainly contains an extensive review of the different types of code injection attacks known to date and having in mind Structured Query Language injection as a case study.








Chapter 1Introduction



1.1 Background of the Study

Code Injection Attack is a type of exploitation caused by processing invalid data input. The concept of Code Injection Attack is to introduce malicious code into a program so as to change the course of execution. Such an attack may be performed by adding strings of malicious characters into data values in the form or argument values in the URL. Code Injection Attack generally take advantages of inadequate validation over input/output data, for example:

·         Lack of defining a class of allowed characters (such as standard regular expressions or custom classes).
·         Lack of restricting the data format (such as date format dd/mm/yyyy).
·         Lack of checking the amount of expected data (such as maximum length restriction).
·         Lack of restricting the data type (such as numerical input only).

Code Injection Attack is the general name for various types of attacks which inject improper code into the script interpreter. This can be achieved through different dimensions which included:

·           Web Level
·           Application/Database Level
·           Operating System (OS) Level
However, with the dimensions of code injection attack clearly listed above, the main types of code injection attack can easily be classified under one or more of the dimensions listed above. The four (4) main types of code injection attacks are as listed below:-
·         SQL injection: SQL injection is a code injection technique, used to attack data-driven applications, in which malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution (e.g. to dump the database contents to the attacker).

·         Script injection: Various types of code injection attacks which allow an attacker to supply code to the server side scripting engine.

·         Shell injection: Shell injection (or Command Injection) is named after UNIX shells, but applies to most systems which allow software to programmatically execute a command line. This class of attacks exploits applications which use input to formulate commands that are executed by the OS.

·         Dynamic evaluation: Here in dynamic evaluation, arbitrary code is inserted in place of standard input, resulting in that code being executed as part of the application. Example, Php's eval(); command will execute PHP code passed to it as a parameter. Also, watch out for dynamic function and variable evaluation.

1.1.1 Application of Code Injection Attack

Despite the fact that code injection attack has been seen from a negative aspect of hackers or malicious user using the means of code injection attack to obtain resources to which on a normal circumstances they are not allow to access, or using the means of code injection attack to carry out a prohibited or unwanted act over the internet or on a user’s computer, code injection still go a long way to prove some positive usage of it, and they are as follows:
·         Code injection can be used to change or tweak the behaviour of a program or system that is to "trick" the system or program into behaving in a certain way without any malicious intent. 
·         Introduce a useful new column that did not appear in the original design of a search results page.
·         Offer a new way to filter, order, or group data by using a field not exposed in the default functions of the original design.
·         Code injection attack can be use with programs like Dropbox, to add special parts that could be used to connect to online resources in an offline program.

1.1.2 Some Preventive Measures of Code injection Attacks

To prevent code injection problems, utilize secure input and output handling, such as:
  • Using API which if used properly are secure against all input characters. Parameterized queries (also known as "Compiled queries", "prepared statements", "bound variables") allows for moving user data out of string to be interpreted. Additionally Criteria API and similar API's move away from the concept of command strings to be created and interpreted.
  • Enforcing language separation via a static type system.
  • Input validation, such as Whitelisting only accepting known good values
  • Input encoding, e.g. escaping dangerous characters. For instance, in PHP, using the htmlspecialchars() function (converts HTML tags to their ISO-8859-1 equivalents) and/or strip_tags() function (completely removes HTML tags) for safe output of text in HTML, and mysql_real_escape_string() to isolate data which will be included in an SQL request, to protect against SQL Injection.
  • Output encoding, i.e. preventing HTML Injection (XSS) attacks against web site visitors
  • Modular shell disassociation from kernel
The solutions listed above deal primarily with web-based injection of HTML or script code into a server-side application. Other approaches must be taken, however, when dealing with injection of user code on the user machine, resulting in privilege elevation attacks.




1.2 Problem Statement

The problem statement on SQL injection is as clearly shown below:
·           SQL injection attack been a sophisticated affair, young programmers and enthusiast who do not know about SQL injection attacks always have tight corners in implementing preventive measures against SQL injection in their products.

·           With the influences of new platforms and systems springing up, malicious attackers always come up with new ideas and ways in carrying out and implementing their attacks, thus making young programmers and system designers work extra mile to meet up covering the latest vulnerabilities.

·           With SQL injection attacks also being a high security affair, developers who have good knowledge of SQL injection attack find it very uncomfortable to teach or novice programmers and system designers what SQL injection attacks is all about due to the fear of being seen as an attacker.


1.3 Aims & Objective

The main aim of studying this topic is to create the awareness and also the notion of code injection attack on several platforms in our modern time to the public, ranging from operating systems to web base application as the case may be. Taking into consideration SQL injection which is the highest means of code injection attack.

1.4 Significance of the Study

At the end of this report one should have been familiar to code injection attack as a whole, how attackers use it on different platforms, especially SQL injection, dimensions of code injection attack, types of code injection attacks as well as types of SQL injection attack, then applications of code injection and several measures that one can use to reduce or minimize code injection attack.

1.5 Scope of Study

Due to the diversified nature of code injection attack, the scope of my study will strictly cover on SQL Injection Attack. However on SQL injection I will cut across the list given below:-
·         Brief understanding to SQL injection attack.
·         Main Types of SQL Injection Mechanism.
·         Mode of Operation (based on Injection Through User Input).
·         Preventive Measures of SQL injection Attacks



1.6 Limitations

On the course of my research on code injection attack, there were limitation which I experienced that really made the task a little bit difficult for me. Below are some of the limitation which I came across:-
·      Difficulties with getting access to the internet. Due to the poor internet infrastructure around in our locality, it’s a tedious task whenever one wants to access the web, even if you have the best devices in hand, you still can’t access the web due to poor internet infrastructure
·      With code injection attack been a sophisticated affair, detailed materials are not much deposited on the internet, thus hindering me on getting on a much more detailed study.
·      Poor electricity supply was also a crucial issue I faced during my research, it really hindered me in such a way that the device I used mainly for the research which is my laptop is an electronic device, thus with poor electricity supply, I mostly had an idle time.

1.7 Glossary


XSS (Cross Site Scripting): Is a type of computer security vulnerability typically found in web applications, it basically enable malicious attackers to inject client-side script into web pages viewed by other users.
SQL (Structured Query Language): Is the standard language for accessing relational databases.
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): Is a language used to specifically encode the content and format of a document and to also link documents on the worldwide web.
Query: A specific set of instructions for extracting particular data, or extracting data from a database and present it for use.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator): An address for a resource on the Internet. URLs are used by Web browsers to locate Internet resources on the web.
OSI (Open System Interconnection): is a conceptual model that characterizes and standardizes the communication functions of a telecommunication or computing system without regards to their underlying internal structure and technology.
API (Application Programming Interface): Is a set of routine, protocols, and tools for building software applications, it also expresses a software component in terms of its operation, inputs, outputs, and underlying types.





1.8 Organisation of the Chapters


Here this part of the literature clearly state the general overview arrangement of this material, also the contents in which the various segment of the material contain. Below is the provided organisation of chapters:

In chapter 2, the main content here is the Literature Review. The literature review basically contain the interest of what other researchers also feel about SQL injection attack as a whole. Still on this chapter, basic introductory knowledge about SQL injection attack was also deposited here. More also, in chapter 3, this is where the main body of the literature lies, i.e. the Findings. The findings encompasses the detailed introduction of SQL injection attack, i.e. what SQL injection attack is. More also, paying attention to the various SQL injection attack mechanism, the mechanism are basically ways or technique in which SQL injection attack could be carried out by malicious attackers on victims. Furthermore the mode of operation of SQL injection attack was also discussed here, and this is just how SQL injection attack works. With all this in place, the last phase of this chapter contains the preventive measures of SQL injection attacks, and this is nothing but ways or things that can be done to prevent SQL injection attacks from malicious attackers. Furthermore, in chapter 4, this is the last phase of the document, and it contains mainly the Conclusion of the whole literature. The conclusion is just simply the summary wrap up, the benefits attached in carrying out the research study of the topic as given.


Chapter 2Literature Review

 

I reviewed a number of documents and gathered some information from web sites to gain sufficient knowledge about SQL Injection attacks. Following are the materials from which I covered different important contents on code injection attack SQL injection attacks:

From the work of William and his colleagues a detailed introduction and a basic general understanding of SQL injection attack (William, Jeremy, & Alessandro, 2002) . SQL injection vulnerabilities have been described as one of the most serious threats for Web applications, the fact is that it remains the truth. We are aware of how the internet is growing bigger by the day, it will be on a safer side for every developer to have this in mind, and also implement preventive measure on the course of development. The same material still covered types of SQL Injection Mechanism, the mechanisms provided in the materials are those that are the most frequently used, also a highlight on cases or circumstances such injection mechanism could be used.

Also in “Code Injection” by (Joint Universities Computer Centre Limited, 2012), here a background of code injection was generally treated in a brief, and it pin pointed some inadequate validations that code injection can easily take advantage of, and the cause of these inadequate validations can be seen from the developers end e.g. lack of restricting datatypes, with a little neglect of such, a malicious user or attacker can easily take advantage of that, and the end product will be a devastating one, so on the long run developer should be careful of such flaws. More also, the material still went forward to break down code injection attack into three main dimension (i.e. Web Level, Application/Database Level and Operating System (OS) Level) with this in place, what it simply means is that, any form of code injection attack can easily be classified under one or more of the dimension as listed above, thus making it possible to easily tell which dimension a code injection attack belongs to.

Furthermore, according to (Aaron, 2012) a publication on his website clearly pointed out key preventive measures one should consider in order to keep away malicious users or attackers who intend using SQL injection mechanism to carry out their dubious acts on web base applications. The preventive measure provided here really tallied with the ones listed by (Joint Universities Computer Centre Limited, 2012) thus, giving me more rooms to confidently rely on the preventive measures as provided by (Aaron, 2012). The most interesting thing about these preventive measures is that, they a not so difficult task to implement, that is to say that they can easily be implemented on the course of development. Also the preventive measure should even be seen from the perspective of good ethics a developer should even inculcate in his or herself, so that when such ethics is embedded in a developers mind it will become a more familiar duty, thus reducing the chances of you product in fallen a victim of SQL injection attacks. 




Chapter 3
Findings


Putting SQL injection into consideration because it is the most wide spread form of code injection attack, this section of the literature will focus mainly on SQL injection attack.

3.1 Brief Understanding on SQL Injection Attack


SQL injection attack has been regarded as one of the most serious threats to Web based applications. Web based applications that are vulnerable to SQL injection attack may easily allow an attacker to gain complete access to their underlying databases. Because these databases mainly contain sensitive consumer or user information, the resulting security violations can include identity theft, loss of confidential or private information, and fraud. In some cases, attackers can even use an SQL injection to take control of and even corrupt the system that hosts the Web based application. Web applications that are vulnerable to SQL Injection Attacks (SQLIAs) are widespread, according to (Erdin, 2013) study shows that on over 300 Internet Web sites has shown that most of them could be highly vulnerable to SQL Injection Attack. In fact, SQLIAs have successfully targeted high-profile victims in our present day.

According to (William, Jeremy, & Alessandro, 2002) SQL injection refers to a class of code-injection attacks in which data provided by a user is included in an SQL query in such a way that part of the user’s input is treated as SQL code. With this, an attacker can submit SQL commands directly to the database. These attacks are serious threat to any Web based application that receives input from users and incorporates it into SQL queries to an underlying database. Most Web based applications used on the Internet or within an enterprise system works this way and could therefore be vulnerable to SQL injection.

3.2 Main Types of SQL Injection Mechanism

Malicious SQL statements can be introduced into a vulnerable application using many different input mechanisms, this input mechanism simply refer to the different ways an attacker can use SQL injection to transverse through a vulnerable application. In this section, a detailed explanation will be carried out on the most common mechanisms.

The main types of SQL injection mechanisms alongside their explanation is as shown below:

·         Injection Through User Input: In this mechanism, attackers inject SQL commands by providing suitably crafted user input. A Web based application can read user inputs in several ways based on the environment in which the application is deployed. In most SQL injection attacks that target Web based applications, user inputs typically comes from form submissions. Web base applications are generally capable to access the user inputs contained in these requests as they would access any other variable in their environment.

·         Injection Through Cookies: Cookies simply are files that contain state information generated by Web applications and stored on a client’s machine. When a client returns to a Web application, cookies can be used to restore the client’s state information. Since the client has control over the storage of the cookie, a malicious client could tamper with the cookie’s contents. If a Web application uses the cookie’s contents to build SQL queries, an attacker could easily submit an attack by embedding it in the cookie.

·         Injection Through Server Variables: Server variables are a collection of variables that contains hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), network headers, and environmental variables. Web applications use these server variables in a variety of different ways, such as logging usage statistics, and identifying browsing trends. If these variables are logged to a database without sanitization, this could easily create an SQL injection vulnerability. Because attackers can forge the values that are placed in HTTP and network headers, they can then exploit this vulnerability by placing an SQLIA directly into the headers. When the query to log the server variable is issued to the database of the web application, the attack in the forged header is then triggered.

·         Second-order Injection: In second-order injections, here attackers inject malicious inputs into a system or database to indirectly trigger an SQLIA when that input is then used at a later time. The main objective of this kind of attack differs significantly from the regular first-order injection attacks. Second-order injections are not trying to cause the attack to occur when the malicious input injected initially reaches the database. Instead, attackers rely on knowledge of where the input will be subsequently used and craft their attacks so that it occurs or take place during that usage.

3.3 Mode of Operation

SQL injection attack takes advantage of the sequential query language (SQL) syntax to inject commands that can read, modify or alter a database, or even compromise the meaning of the original query. Here, the use of one of the SQL injection mechanism called the “Injection Through User Input”, will be used to properly explain or demonstrate the mode of operation i.e. how SQL injection attack work or is been carried out.




Pictorial Representation of how SQL injection attack is performed


Pictorial representation of how SQL injection attack is performed


Figure 1: Pictorial representation of how SQL injection attack is performed (Woods, 2006)

For example, consider a web page that has two fields on a form to allow users to enter a Username and also a corresponding Password. The code behind the page will generate an SQL query to check the password against the list of user names:

Figure 2:  Login page showing Username and Password field

SELECT UserList.Username
FROM UserList
WHERE UserList.Username = 'Username'
AND UserList.Password = 'Password'


a simple password and username window


 
If this query returns any rows, then access is granted. However, if the malicious user enters a valid Username and injects some valid code like this ("password' OR '1'='1") in the Password field, then the resulting query will look like this:
 
SELECT UserList.Username
FROM UserList
WHERE UserList.Username = 'Username'
AND UserList.Password = 'password' OR '1'='1'
In the example above, "Password" is assumed to be blank or can be seen as harmless string. "'1'='1'" will always be true and many rows will be returned, thereby allowing access. The technique may be fine-tuned to allow multiple statements to run, or even to load up and run external programs.

3.4 Preventive Measures of SQL injection Attacks

The preventive measures that will be discussed here shortly, emphasis or concentrate more on SQL injection preventive measures, but some of the preventive measures can also be applicable to other types of code injection attack as the case may be. Nevertheless, preventive measures are basically ways or means in which a developer can easily safeguard or protect its product from malicious attacks, which in this case is SQL injection attacks. Below are some of the preventive measures:

·      Input Validation and Sanitisation: Web sites must filter all user input. Ideally, user data should be properly filtered for context. For example, e-mail addresses should be filtered to allow only the characters allowed in an e-mail address. Phone numbers should be filtered to allow only the characters allowed in a phone number, and so on.

·      Use of Web Application Firewall (WAF): A Web Application Firewall (“WAF”) is an intermediary device that sits between a web-client and a web server. The web application firewall analyzes OSI Layer-7 messages (i.e. application layer) for violations in the pre-configured security policy, and help to filter out malicious data and requests. In general, these rules cover common attacks such as the cross-site Scripting (“XSS”). In addition, WAF is particularly useful when using third party developed web based applications, as the modification of the application source code is not required.

·      Appropriate / Least User Privileges: Web based applications should never connect to your database using an account with admin-level privileges (e.g. “root” account). All application processes should always be executed with the minimal privileges required. In addition, processes must release privileges as soon as they no longer require them again. Best practice is to create an isolated account specifically for each application and then deny access to all objects that are unnecessary to be used by the applications.
·      Avoid Constructing SQL Queries With User Input: It is well known that, even data sanitization routines can be flawed. Ideally, using SQL variable binding with prepared statements or stored procedures is much more safer than constructing full queries.

·      Error Messages Handling: Hackers can easily learn a great deal about a system architecture from error messages, detailed error information can be used to modify the original attack, thus increasing the chances of a successful hacking. Therefore, it should be a necessity for one to display as little information as possible in error messages. Besides, it is better to use the generic error messages on the local machine while ensuring that an external hacker only gets nothing more than the fact that his/her actions resulted in an unhandled error.

Any of the above listed preventive measure significantly reduces the chances of a successful SQL injection attack. Implementing all of them is a best practice that will provide an extremely high degree of protection. Despite its widespread use, a developer’s product does not have to be SQL injection's next victim.




Chapter 4
Conclusion


With this literature material which can be seen as a mini archive of knowledge about code injection attack, and to be specific “SQL injection attack”, one can confidently feel familiar with no fear over issues of SQL injection attack when it arises. With background ideas on what SQL injection attacks is, the various types of SQL injection attack, the mode of operation of SQL injection attack, taking into consideration one of the widely used mechanism which is “injection through user input” and also with preventive measures that one can use to protect his or her product from malicious attackers. With all this in place, young minds and enthusiast who asper to soar high in the various fields of web technology and security implementation will be more equipped and also aware of relating security breaches they will interface with in their various lines of career pursuit.


References


Aaron. (2012, August 16). How to prevent SQL injection Attacks - eSecurity Planet. Retrieved from esecurityplanet: http://www.esecurityplanet.com/hackers/how-to-prevent-sql-injection-attacks.html
Erdin, E. (2013). Code Injection. Califonia: Golden Press.
Joint Universities Computer Centre Limited. (2012). Code Injection. A newsletter for IT Professionals.
William, G. H., Jeremy, V., & Alessandro, O. (2002). A Classification of SQL Injection Attacks and Countermeasures. SQL Injection Attacks and Countermeasures.
Woods, P. (2006, april 19). introduction to SQL injection attack. Retrieved from www.simplicable.com: www.simplicable.com/introduction_to_SQL_injection_attack



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