Survey and Comparative Analysis of SQL Injection Attacks, Detection and Prevention Techniques for Web Applications Security

Web applications witnessed a rapid growth for online business and transactions are expected to be secure, efficient and reliable to the users against any form of injection attacks. SQL injection is one of the most common application layer attack techniques used today by hackers to steal data from organizations. It is a technique that exploits a security vulnerability occurring in the database layer of a web application. The attack takes advantage of poor input validation in code and website administration. It allows attackers to obtain illegitimate access to the backend database to change the intended application generated SQL queries. . In spite of the development of different approaches to prevent SQL injection, it still remains a frightening risk to web applications. In this paper, we present a detailed review on various types of SQL injection attacks, detection and prevention techniques, and their comparative analysis based on the performance and practicality. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.150613

Security in web applications: a comparative analysis of key SQL injection detection techniques

Over the years, technological advances have driven massive proliferation of web systems and businesses have harbored a seemingly insatiable need for Internet systems and services. Whilst data is considered as a key asset to businesses and that their security is of extreme importance, there has been growing cybersecurity threats faced by web systems. One of the key attacks that web applications are vulnerable to is SQL injection (SQLi) attacks and successful attacks can reveal sensitive information to attackers or even deface web systems. As part of SQLi defence strategy, effective detection of SQLi attacks is important. Even though different techniques have been devised over the years to detect SQLi attacks, limited work has been undertaken to review and compare the effectiveness of these detection techniques. As such, in order to address this gap in literature, this paper performs a review and comparative analysis of the different SQLi detection techniques, with the aim to detect SQLi attacks in an effective manner and enhance the security of web applications. As part of the investigation, seven SQLi detection techniques including machine learning based detection are reviewed and their effectiveness against different types of SQLi attacks are compared. Results identified positive tainting and adoption of machine learning among the most effective techniques and stored procedures based SQLi as the most challenging attack to detect

An Efficient Technique for Detection and Prevention of SQL Injection Attack using ASCII Based String Matching

AbstractWith the rise of the Internet, web applications, such as online banking and web-based email, have become integral to many people's daily lives. Web applications have brought with them new classes of computer security vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection. It is a class of input validation based vulnerabilities. Typical uses of SQL injection leak confidential information from a database, by-pass authentication logic, or add unauthorized accounts to a database. This security prevents the unauthorized access to your database and also it prevents your data from being altered or deleted by users without the appropriate permissions. Malicious Text Detector, Constraint Validation, Query length validation and Text based Key Generator are the four types of filtration technique used to detect and prevent the SQL Injection Attacks from accessing the databas

Runtime Detection and Prevention for Structure Query Language Injection Attacks

The use of Internet services and web applications has grown rapidly because of user demand. At the same time, the number of web application vulnerabilities has increased as a result of mistakes in the development where some developers gave the security aspect a lower priority than aspects like application usability. An SQL (structure query language) injection is a common vulnerability in web applications as it allows the hacker or illegal user to have access to the web application’s database and therefore damage the data, or change the information held in the database. This thesis proposes a new framework for the detection and prevention of new and common types of SQL injection attacks. The programme of research is divided in several work packages that start from addressing the problem of the web application in general and SQL injection in particular and discuss existing approaches. The other work packages follow a constructive research approach. The framework considers existing and new SQL injection attacks. The framework consists of three checking components; the first component will check the user input for existing attacks, the second component will check for new types of attacks, and the last component will block unexpected responses from the database engine. Additionally, our framework will keep track of an ongoing attack by recording and investigating user behaviour. The framework is based on the Anatempura tool, a runtime verification tool for Interval Temporal Logic properties. Existing attacks and good/bad user behaviours are specified using Interval Temporal Logic, and the detection of new SQL injection attacks is done using the database observer component. Moreover, this thesis discusses a case study where various types of user behaviour are specified in Interval Temporal Logic and show how these can be detected. The implementation of each component has been provided and explained in detail showing the input, the output and the process of each component. Finally, the functionality of each checking component is evaluated using a case study. The user behaviour component is evaluated using sample attacks and normal user inputs. This thesis is summarized at the conclusion chapter, the future work and the limitations will be discussed. This research has made the following contributions: • New framework for detection and prevention of SQL injection attacks. • Runtime detection: use runtime verification technique based on Interval Temporal logic to detect various types of SQL injection attacks. • Database observer: to detect possible new injection attacks by monitoring database transactions. • User’s behaviour: investigates related SQL injection attacks using user input, and providing early warning against SQL injection attacks

A detailed survey on various aspects of SQL injection in web applications: vulnerabilities, innovative attacks and remedies

In today’s world, Web applications play a very important role in individual life as well as in any country’s development. Web applications have gone through a very rapid growth in the recent years and their adoption is moving faster than that was expected few years ago. Now-a-days, billions of transactions are done online with the aid of different Web applications. Though these applications are used by hundreds of people, in many cases the security level is weak, which makes them vulnerable to get compromised. In most of the scenarios, a user has to be identified before any communication is established with the backend database. An arbitrary user should not be allowed access to the system without proof of valid credentials. However, a crafted injection gives access to unauthorized users. This is mostly accomplished via SQL Injection input. In spite of the development of different approaches to prevent SQL injection, it still remains an alarming threat to Web applications. In this paper, we present a detailed survey on various types of SQL Injection vulnerabilities, attacks, and their prevention techniques. Alongside presenting our findings from the study, we also note down future expectations and possible development of countermeasures against SQL Injection attacks

Web Application Reinforcement via Efficient Systematic Analysis and Runtime Validation (ESARV)

Securing the data, a fundamental asset in an organization, against SQL Injection (SQLI), the most frequent attack in web applications, is vital. In SQLI, an attacker alters the structure of the actual query by injecting code via the input, and gaining access to the database. This paper proposes a new method for securing web applications against SQLI Attacks (SQLIAs). It contains two phases based on systematic analysis and runtime validation and uses our new technique for detection and prevention. At the static phase, our method removes user inputs from SQL queries and gathers as much information as possible, from static and dynamic queries in order to minimize the overhead at runtime. On the other hand, at the dynamic phase, the prepared information alongside our technique are used to check the validity of the runtime query. To facilitate the usage of our method and show our expectations in practice, ESARV was implemented. The empirical evaluations demonstrated in this paper, indicate that ESARV is efficient, accurate, effective, and also has no deployment requirements