Automatic Creation of SQL Injection and Cross-Site Scripting Attacks

We present a technique for finding security vulnerabilitiesin Web applications. SQL Injection (SQLI) and cross-sitescripting (XSS) attacks are widespread forms of attackin which the attacker crafts the input to the application toaccess or modify user data and execute malicious code. Inthe most serious attacks (called second-order, or persistent,XSS), an attacker can corrupt a database so as to causesubsequent users to execute malicious code.This paper presents an automatic technique for creatinginputs that expose SQLI and XSS vulnerabilities. The techniquegenerates sample inputs, symbolically tracks taintsthrough execution (including through database accesses),and mutates the inputs to produce concrete exploits. Oursis the first analysis of which we are aware that preciselyaddresses second-order XSS attacks.Our technique creates real attack vectors, has few falsepositives, incurs no runtime overhead for the deployed application,works without requiring modification of applicationcode, and handles dynamic programming-languageconstructs. We implemented the technique for PHP, in a toolArdilla. We evaluated Ardilla on five PHP applicationsand found 68 previously unknown vulnerabilities (23 SQLI,33 first-order XSS, and 12 second-order XSS)

Monitoring web applications for vulnerability discovery and removal under attack

Tese de mestrado, Engenharia Informática (Arquitetura, Sistemas e Redes de Computadores) Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2018Web applications are ubiquitous in our everyday lives, as they are deployed in the most diverse contexts and support a variety of services. The correctness of these applications, however, can be compromised by vulnerabilities left in their source code, often incurring in nefarious consequences, such as the theft of private data and the adulteration of information. This dissertation proposes a solution for the automatic detection and removal of vulnerabilities in web applications programmed in the PHP language. By monitoring the user interactions with the web applications with traditional attack discovery tools, it is possible to identify malicious inputs that are eventually provided by attackers. These in- puts are then explored by a directed static analysis approach, allowing for the discovery of potential security issues and the correction of bugs in the program. The solution was implemented and validated with a set of vulnerable web applications. The experimental results demonstrate that the tool is capable of detecting and correcting SQL Injection and XSS vulnerabilities. In total 174 vulnerabilities were found in 5 web applications, where 2 of these were previously unknown by the research community(i.e., they were ”zero-day” vulnerabilities)

Formal Analysis of Vulnerabilities of Web Applications Based on SQL Injection (Extended Version)

We present a formal approach that exploits attacks related to SQL Injection (SQLi) searching for security flaws in a web application. We give a formal representation of web applications and databases, and show that our formalization effectively exploits SQLi attacks. We implemented our approach in a prototype tool called SQLfast and we show its efficiency on real-world case studies, including the discovery of an attack on Joomla! that no other tool can find

Security Testing: A Survey

Identifying vulnerabilities and ensuring security functionality by security testing is a widely applied measure to evaluate and improve the security of software. Due to the openness of modern software-based systems, applying appropriate security testing techniques is of growing importance and essential to perform effective and efficient security testing. Therefore, an overview of actual security testing techniques is of high value both for researchers to evaluate and refine the techniques and for practitioners to apply and disseminate them. This chapter fulfills this need and provides an overview of recent security testing techniques. For this purpose, it first summarize the required background of testing and security engineering. Then, basics and recent developments of security testing techniques applied during the secure software development lifecycle, i.e., model-based security testing, code-based testing and static analysis, penetration testing and dynamic analysis, as well as security regression testing are discussed. Finally, the security testing techniques are illustrated by adopting them for an example three-tiered web-based business application

Effective software testing with a string-constraint solver

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-100).This dissertation presents techniques and tools for improving software reliability, by using an expressive string-constraint solver to make implementation-based testing more effective and more applicable. Concolic testing is a paradigm of implementation-based systematic software testing that combines dynamic symbolic execution with constraint-based systematic execution-path enumeration. Concolic testing is easy to use and effective in finding real errors. It is, however, limited by the expressiveness of the underlying constraint solver. Therefore, to date, concolic testing has not been successfully applied to programs with highly-structured inputs (e.g., compilers), or to Web applications. This dissertation shows that the effectiveness and applicability of concolic testing can be greatly improved by using an expressive and efficient string-constraint solver, i.e., a solver for constraints on string variables. We present the design, implementation, and experimental evaluation of a novel string-constraint solver. Furthermore, we show novel techniques for two important problems in concolic testing: getting past input validation in programs with highly-structured inputs, and creating inputs that demonstrate security vulnerabilities in Web applications.by Adam Kieżun.Ph.D

Mining input sanitization patterns for predicting SQL injection and cross site scripting vulnerabilities

Static code attributes such as lines of code and cyclomatic complexity have been shown to be useful indicators of defects in software modules. As web applications adopt input sanitization routines to prevent web security risks, static code attributes that represent the characteristics of these routines may be useful for predicting web application vulnerabilities. In this paper, we classify various input sanitization methods into different types and propose a set of static code attributes that represent these types. Then we use data mining methods to predict SQL injection and cross site scripting vulnerabilities in web applications. Preliminary experiments show that our proposed attributes are important indicators of such vulnerabilities

SQL Injection analysis, Detection and Prevention

Web sites are dynamic, static, and most of the time a combination of both. Web sites need protection in their database to assure security. An SQL injection attacks interactive web applications that provide database services. These applications take user inputs and use them to create an SQL query at run time. In an SQL injection attack, an attacker might insert a malicious SQL query as input to perform an unauthorized database operation. Using SQL injection attacks, an attacker can retrieve or modify confidential and sensitive information from the database. It may jeopardize the confidentiality and security of Web sites which totally depends on databases. This report presents a “code reengineering” that implicitly protects the applications which are written in PHP from SQL injection attacks. It uses an original approach that combines static as well as dynamic analysis. [2] In this report, I mentioned an automated technique for moving out SQL injection vulnerabilities from Java code by converting plain text inputs received from users into prepared statements. [3

Nástroj pro penetrační testování webových aplikací

Abstract As hackers become more skilled and sophisticated and with cyber-attacks becoming the norm, it is more important than ever before to undertake regular vulnerability scans and penetration testing to identify vulnerabilities and ensure on a regular basis that the cyber controls are working. In this thesis the importance and working of penetration testing and web application based penetration testing are discussed, followed by comparison and information’s about various testing tools and techniques and their advantages and disadvantages. The next section of the thesis mainly focuses on the past, current and future state of penetration testing in the computer systems and application security, importance of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Content Management system (CMS) followed by the main goal of the thesis which explains the existing solutions in automated tools for vulnerability detection of web application their techniques, positive and negative results of the conducted tests and their merits and demerits. In the next section, based on the comparison of various existing tools selecting appropriate algorithm for discussing the importance of scanning the ports which are usually focused in very few existing web application tools, the following section practically demonstrate the scanning of ports which gives information regarding, the state of ports to understand the service information running on the server. Finally the result of the experiment will be compared with the existing web application tools.Abstraktní Vzhledem k tomu, že se hackeři stávají zkušenějšími a sofistikovanějšími a kybernetické útoky se stávají normou, je důležitější než kdy jindy provádět pravidelné kontroly zranitelnosti a penetrační testování, aby bylo možné identifikovat zranitelná místa a pravidelně zajišťovat fungování kybernetických kontrol. V této práci je diskutován význam a fungování penetračního testování a penetračního testování založeného na webových aplikacích, následuje srovnání a informace o různých testovacích nástrojích a technikách a jejich výhodách a nevýhodách. Další část práce se zaměřuje především na minulý, současný a budoucí stav penetračního testování v počítačových systémech a zabezpečení aplikací, význam nařízení o obecné ochraně údajů (GDPR) a redakčního systému (CMS) následovaného hlavním cílem práce, která vysvětluje stávající řešení v automatizovaných nástrojích pro zjišťování zranitelnosti webové aplikace, jejich techniky, pozitivní a negativní výsledky provedených testů a jejich přednosti a nedostatky. V další části, založené na srovnání různých existujících nástrojů, které vybírají vhodný algoritmus pro diskusi o důležitosti skenování portů, které jsou obvykle zaměřeny na velmi málo stávajících webových aplikací, následující část prakticky demonstruje skenování portů, které poskytují informace týkající se, stav portů pro pochopení informací o službě běžících na serveru. Nakonec bude výsledek experimentu porovnán s existujícími nástroji webové aplikace.460 - Katedra informatikyvelmi dobř