Book Image

SQL Injection Strategies

By : Ettore Galluccio, Edoardo Caselli, Gabriele Lombari
Book Image

SQL Injection Strategies

By: Ettore Galluccio, Edoardo Caselli, Gabriele Lombari

Overview of this book

SQL injection (SQLi) is probably the most infamous attack that can be unleashed against applications on the internet. SQL Injection Strategies is an end-to-end guide for beginners looking to learn how to perform SQL injection and test the security of web applications, websites, or databases, using both manual and automated techniques. The book serves as both a theoretical and practical guide to take you through the important aspects of SQL injection, both from an attack and a defense perspective. You’ll start with a thorough introduction to SQL injection and its impact on websites and systems. Later, the book features steps to configure a virtual environment, so you can try SQL injection techniques safely on your own computer. These tests can be performed not only on web applications but also on web services and mobile applications that can be used for managing IoT environments. Tools such as sqlmap and others are then covered, helping you understand how to use them effectively to perform SQL injection attacks. By the end of this book, you will be well-versed with SQL injection, from both the attack and defense perspective.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)
1
Section 1: (No)SQL Injection in Theory
4
Section 2: SQL Injection in Practice

Chapter 5

  1. User input should be always considered potentially malicious, so it always needs to be sanitized and validated.
  2. Validating input means deciding if it's valid or not before it's accepted. Blacklisting blocks all known invalid input, while whitelisting only accepts known valid input.
  3. Parameterized queries are a way to build query statements that consist of breaking the query strings in parameters. These are first stored as variables and then inserted into the query's body.
  4. Character encoding and escaping are useful for transforming harmful characters that could otherwise be interpreted by SQL causing SQL injection.
  5. The purpose of a Web Application Firewall (WAF) is to filter requests at the application level, as well as to identify and prevent dangerous requests from reaching the application.
  6. No. If an attacker gains access to the encrypted data, they could also obtain the encryption key, thus rendering encryption useless.