Unauthorized usage is, unfortunately, a growing threat in businesses today with its severe impact on businesses—regardless if unauthorized users have stolen private data, took control of IT systems, or shut down websites.
As CEOs and business owners, you should be aware and oriented about the various web app threats your business is vulnerable to, without necessarily having a full grasp of its technicalities.
One of the most commonly used and successful threat is injection attacks because of its many types, which can be carried out to different sites.
Injection attacks are the most effective when there are flaws or vulnerabilities in your database and middleware systems. Further, hidden commands or “injections” can creep into the system—usually from unknown files or attachments in the web that users download or open, allowing unauthorized users to gain unauthorized access to your data.
This is why an IT security analyst is vital, as he protects your system and network, carries out security measures, and creates solutions to prevent data from being stolen, damaged, or compromised, for the usual database administrator does not really value such threats and is focused more on the optimum performance of the databases.
Conversely, here are some of most common injection attacks carried out by hackers that you should get the knack of.
1. SQL Injection
The SQL Injection attack is the most common form carried out and operates by injecting data to your system processes to alter the execution of your operations.
For example, if your program instruction is to “e-mail password resets to the e-mail address on file”, an SQL injection attack can include data into it so that it would be carried out as “e-mail password resets to the e-mail address on file and send it to hack@hacker.com.”
Information leaks and stored data disclosure are usually the common goals of this type of attack. An example of this attack was the Yahoo! Voices hack in July 2012, where 450,000 Yahoo login user credentials were stolen.
How you can prevent it:
IT security analysts should not assume that all queries being run are to be trusted, as validation is necessary. Further, enforcing the least privilege principle will substantially secure your database, as well as separating reading and writing data to database privileges based on user access to heighten security.
2. Code Injection (Remote File Inclusion)
Code Injections allow unauthorized users to upload malicious files or custom codes to your website or database using a script, which enables them to change the course of execution.
Code Injections differ from Command Injections in the limitation of hackers to the functionality of the injected code or script. For example, if the malicious script is in PHP, it is only bound by what PHP codes and executions are capable of.
Examples of Code Injection attacks are computer worms or malware programs infecting your network and equipment.
How you can prevent it:
Code Injections exploit vulnerabilities in your system, so deploying regular security updates or patches allows you to prevent these attacks from spreading or executing their script.
3. Command Injection
Command Injections change how the operating system of your computer or network works by executing commands. Unlike Code Injections where scripts are altered, Command Injections carry out commands affecting the whole system.
Unauthorized users can run any command resulting in a possible system compromise or data leak.
How you can prevent it:
Similar to SQL Injections, validation is also important. Validating user input, especially from untrusted sources should be automatic and consistently carried out.
IT security analysts and the developers should use safe APIs (application programming interfaces) to filter these types of injections.
4. Log Injection
This kind of injection attack targets log files, inserting, manipulates or forges malicious log entries to allow unauthorized users to mislead a log audit, cover traces of an attack, or perform other malicious actions.
How you can prevent it:
Control the access to these files, and have necessary protective measures to validate data input before it can be written into logs.
You can also set up a rule for allowed characters in logs such as parameters to only include alphanumeric characters.
5. Path Traversal (Directory Traversal)
Path traversals, also known as directory climbing or backtracking occur when attackers do an HTTP exploit (using your web server address) to access restricted directories and carry out commands from there. Ultimately, this can compromise your whole system.
How you can prevent it:
You must have the latest version of your web server software and have applied the necessary and up-to-date patches.
6. XML Injection
During an injection attack like this, hackers inject various tags (XML tags) that modify the XML structure or program. This results in carrying out a restricted operation that can violate security objectives of the program.
Common examples include modification of payment data and unauthorized logins, where security objective of integrity and security objective of access control are violated respectively.
How you can prevent it:
Proper monitoring of any input is essential. Any suspicious input or queries should not be allowed to reach the main code or program.
By orienting yourself with these different types of web hacking techniques or injection attacks, you can have a clear understanding of how to prevent and mitigate such attacks when it happens.