DBMS specific SQL injection attack is one of the different types of the
SQL injection. Some of the SQL injection attacks that are carried out today on
web sites are based up on the DBMS specific SQL injection.
About DBMS specific SQL
- DBMS specific SQL is
employed for sending the certain specified statements to the engine of the data
base for its execution.
- Unless the connection is not specified, the default
cursors for the default connections are used by the prolific.
- For the DBMS
specific SQL, the statements can fed to the data base engine in any format that
it supports.
- Such a privilege
grants you the access to all the features of the data base.
- SQL injection attacks are quite well known
vectors for the data base management systems because they fail to cleanse or
sanitize the input supplied by the users.
- Like in the web based applications,
the passing SQL commands (these commands are the parameters of some stored
procedure and functions) are exploited by the SQL injection attacks.
- These
malicious commands are then executed in the context of the component through
which the required function is called.
- This whole process is carried out via
the system components as well as the administrator’s privileges.
- This process
results in what is called the privilege escalation.
Example to illustrate Privilege Escalation
- Suppose some component provides the backup functionality and is run at
higher privilege.
- A function injected with the malicious SQL statements is
called.
- This allows the user become a DBA by escalating their privileges which
then helps them to overtake the data base.
- By keeping the data base patches up
to date, many of the SQL injection attacks can be effectively avoided.
- Though
the classic SQL injection attack had become outdated and the inference SQL
injection still continues to prevail as great security threat, the DBMS
specific SQL injection attack is still considered to be supportive regardless
of how the classic SQLIA, inference SQL and other types of SQLIAs are utilized.
- The permissions to log in the data base that belongs to some web application
can be limited to only what is required.
- This may prove to be effective in
reducing the affect of the SQL injection attack that may further exploit any
bugs and errors present in the web application or site.
- Like bugs and errors
the severity of the SQL injection attacks also ranges among low, medium and
high levels.
- Following a successful SQL injection attack, the attackers can
very easily execute the arbitrary SQL commands.
- Such vulnerability can be
exploited by the remote authenticated users for injecting the malicious SQL
statements and commands.
- A successful SQL injection can steal the sensitive
data from the data base or modify it as he/ she desires.
- The attacker can even
carry out the administrative operations on the data base like issuing a command
to shut down the whole data base, recover a deleted file etc.
Approaches to avoid malicious SQL injection in database
Any of the two
below mentioned approaches can be followed for avoiding the malicious SQL injections
in to the data base:
1. Parameterized
queries:
- This approach involves the use of bounded queries.
- Out of the two,
this is easier to follow and work in an almost similar way in many languages
including java, .NET, PHP, Perl etc.
- In the parameterized queries the data and
the query is kept separate from each other by bounds.
2. Parameterized
stored procedures:
- Though being a little difficult to implement, it proves to
be more effective than the previous one in avoiding many types of SQL injection
attacks.
Avoiding the use of dynamic table names and even if you are, don’t
accept the names from the users since on using these measures it is very
unlikely that your application will fall victim to the SQL injection attack.
