How To Test For SQL Injection Attacks & Vulnerabilities?

application vulnerability assessment tools

How to Test for SQL Injection Attacks & Vulnerabilities

The first spot on the OWASP Top 10 list for quite some time was occupied by SQL injection vulnerabilities. This is because both of them are still widespread and can lead to very serious implications. Many significant security violations, also in recent months, have been triggered by SQL injections. For example, this form of weakness has caused more than 70 percent of the population of Bulgaria to leak financial data.

SQL bugs, however, are also easy to discover using web vulnerability scanners automatically. The most sophisticated form of SQL injections, such as blind SQL injections, can be found by advanced web security scanning tools such as Acunetix. Often, SQL injections are easy to repair and prevent. Parameterized queries (prepared statements) or stored procedures should be used by developers to prevent the root cause of SQL injections, which is the direct use of untrusted user data in SQL queries.

In this article, we will show you how to use the latest version of Acunetix to scan your web applications for SQL injections. Acunetix, which is deliberately vulnerable to threats, will execute the search on the VulnWeb platform. The article assumes that you have the Acunetix demo downloaded and installed.

STEP 1: CREATING A SCAN TARGET

To begin testing your web application for SQL injections, you need to add your web application URL as the target.

  1.  Click on the Targets icon in the menu on the left. The Targets pane is displayed.
  2. Click on the Add Target button. The Add Target dialog is displayed. In the Address field, enter the full URL of your web application. Optionally, in the Description field, enter a human-readable description of your target.
  3. Click on the Add Target button in the Add Target dialog. The Target Info pane is displayed.
  4. You will customize additional properties for the target in the Target Details panel. You might prefer to use AcuSensor technology, for example, which allows you to install the AcuSensor agent on your web server. To improve the accuracy of your scanning, we suggest that you use this technology.

STEP 2: PERFORMING A SCAN

  1. You can search it anytime you need to, until your target is added and installed. For the future, you should even prepare the scans. Depending on your current desires, there are distinct types of scans. We will do an injection search of SQL in this post.
  2. In the Goal Info window, click on the Scan button. In the left-hand menu, you can also press the Scans icon to open the Scans window, pick the goal by clicking the left-most column, and then click the New Scan button. The scan is ongoing. In the Operation segment, you will see the progress of the scan.
  3. When the scan is finished, a Completed icon will be visible in the Activity section.

STEP 3: INTERPRETING RESULTS

When the imaging is over, you will be able to see the specifics of found flaws so that you will realize what you need to delete. As a service, Acunetix offers a fast look at overall problems, possible solutions, and external connections that will provide support in solving the problem.

  1. You should press on the Vulnerabilities tab to see the specifics of the vulnerabilities found throughout the search. Along the left side of the screen, you can press on the Vulnerabilities icon to see vulnerabilities for all targets at the same time.
  2. To see the details of a selected vulnerability, click on the row in the table that represents the vulnerability. The vulnerability details panel is displayed.

If you can see above, Acunetix has the exact spec of the payload and the resulting SQL query for the payload. As a part of the use of AcuSensor technologies, the software also displays the first data file and line of code that was responsible for the SQL injection flaw.

SUMMARY

An article was authored by Daniel is how to find SQL Injection bugs on your platform, web server, and CMS framework. We can see how the Acunetix Site Vulnerability Screener can rapidly and efficiently be used to search for and quickly find and receive a full summary of all potential SQL Injection bugs and exploits the applications are vulnerable to.