The online scanner identifies SQL Injection vulnerabilities in web applications by crawling and performing a deep inspection of web pages and parameters. Find useful examples in which you can use the SQL Injection scanner below.
What is an SQL Injection and how to prevent this attack?
SQL Injection remains one of the most prevalent attacks used by hackers and a serious security threat to both individuals and companies.
SQLi is also one of the most well-known web application vulnerabilities with a dedicated chapter in the OWASP Top 10 project and is also a highly chased vulnerability in bug bounty programs.
A common SQL Injection attack happens when attackers try to insert malicious SQL statements located in an HTTP (or HTTPS) request by changing the current behavior of SQL statements created by the web application.
They do this by first finding a vulnerable user input within a web app and create input content which is often used as the malicious payload to launch this attack. The input provided by an attacker may include characters that could interfere with the SQL syntax and will result in arbitrary SQL queries performed on the database.
As a result, the risk of an SQL Injection vulnerability is that the attacker could:
Read/write information from the database
Read/write files from the disk (in certain conditions)
Execute operating system commands on the database server (in certain conditions)
Here is a sample URL that extracts the type and version of the database server (MySQL) by exploiting the SQL Injection vulnerability:
http://vulnapp.example.com/travel.jsp?id=x' UNION SELECT NULL, NULL, @@version -- '
One of the most common types of SQL Injection techniques is error-based SQL Injection which is the simplest SQL exploit and easy to detect. It involves using classic HTTP requests by inserting unexpected commands through a user interface to cause the database server to respond with an error that includes information about the target: structure, version, or operating system.
In the below example, an SQL command has been inserted to change the value of the fields Username ($username = 1' or '1' = '1) and Password ($password = 1' or '1' = '1) which will be modified as follows:
Username (($username = 1' or '1' = '1') LIMIT 1/\*)Password ($password = foo)This is an example of a URL with a modified query that will generate an error and let a hacker get access to all the user names and passwords.
http://www.example.com/index.php?username=1'%20or%20'1'%20=%20'1'))%20LIMIT%201/\*&password=foo
To prevent this from happening, you should avoid using the user input directly in the application code. Developers need to sanitize the input section and remove the potentially malicious code in SQL statements that could allow hackers to gain unauthorized access to sensitive database information: usernames, passwords, and other essential credentials.
Prevention is always the best cure and you can simply detect web application vulnerabilities by using our online scanner.
How does the SQL Scanner work?
To better secure your web applications from SQL Injection attacks, it is important to identify and fix security vulnerabilities before hackers do.
Our SQL Injection scanner was created to easily perform SQL Injection testing and find web application flaws promptly.
The SQL Injection Scanner is our comprehensive online security solution that allows you to do a complete SQL Injection assessment of the target web applications and find critical vulnerabilities with a significant impact on any business.
The online tool offers an intuitive and simple interface and uses our in-house web application security scanner for lower false positive rates.
The SQL Injection Scanner (Light Scan) performs a quick and fast scan of a target URL that allows it to identify vulnerabilities in web applications. It does that by searching if the parameters of the target URLs are vulnerable to SQL Injection attacks and reports the malicious pages that could affect your website.
The online scanner includes two steps:
1. Spidering the target:
In this first step, the scanner tries to identify all the pages within the target web application, including injectable parameters in login forms, URLs, headers, etc.
2. Accurate SQL Injection testing:
During this phase, for each page discovered in the previous step, the online tool will try to detect if the parameters are vulnerable to SQL Injection and report them on the results page.
The table below shows the differences between the Light scan and the Deep scan:
Scanner capabilities | Light scan | Deep scan |
|---|---|---|
Spider max URLs | 20 | 500 |
Spider max duration | 1 minute | 15 minutes |
Active scan max duration | 2 minutes | 30 minutes |
The XSS scanner generates HTTP requests which can be flagged as attacks on the server-side (although they are harmless). Do not use it if you don't have proper authorization from the target website owner.
Will this tool also check for MySQL Injection?
MySQL is one of the most accessible and widely deployed SQL databases running on websites and systems and also the top target for hackers. They will search for vulnerable user inputs within the MSQL databases, inject malicious code to manipulate them, and get unauthorized access.
Our online tool will scan the target URL containing SQL commands and check if the MySQL database has been exposed to any SQL Injection vulnerability. It can perform a full SQL Injection assessment of the target web application to detect vulnerabilities before being compromised.
Other popular relational database management systems (RDBMS) that are vulnerable to SQL Injection are Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, or SQLite.
Parameters
Target URL: This is the URL of the website that will be scanned. All URLs must start with http or https.
Light Scan: This scan is faster but less comprehensive than the deep scan.
Deep Scan: This is a complete SQL Injection assessment of the target web application.
How it works
Our SQLi Scanner uses the detection and crawling engine from our in-house website scanner. This engine has a low false positive rate and is actively maintained and improved by our team.
The SQLi Scanner was created to help users automatically detect SQL injection vulnerabilities in web applications vulnerabilities in web applications during the development or penetration testing process.
The tool can do an SQL Injection test by inserting special characters (eg. ', ", 2\*3) in all input fields of the target application and monitoring the web page's behavior. If database errors are discovered on the website, this could be the scenario of an SQL Injection attack.
To validate the vulnerability found, the SQL Injection scanner attempts to construct a syntactically correct SQL query that demonstrates the injection was successful. That is why the following results will be displayed:
http://vulnapp.example.com/bookings.php?cat=4 AND 1=1 --
The SQL Injection scanner does not attempt to exploit SQL injection, it simply detects the presence of any vulnerability that could affect your backend database. If flaws are detected, our online tool offers detailed information about the risks you are exposed to and recommendations on how to perform an effective remediation process. Start scanning for web applications vulnerabilities today so you will not be exposed to SQL Injection attacks which let hackers get to tamper with sensitive information (such as usernames, passwords, and other essential credentials) by disclosing, or deleting it.
For more in-depth information about the SQL Injection attacks, including solutions on how to remediate this vulnerability, you can found on the OWASP SQL Injection Page.
