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Table of Contents
SQL Injection (SQLi)
All SQL Injection is due to dynamic SQL queries. Strongly consider prohibiting dynamic SQL queries completely.
Injection flaws occur when an application sends untrusted data to an interpreter. Injection flaws are very prevalent, particularly in legacy code. They are often found in SQL, LDAP, Xpath, or NoSQL queries; OS commands; XML parsers, SMTP Headers, program arguments, etc. Injection flaws are easy to discover when examining code, but frequently hard to discover via testing. Scanners and fuzzers can help attackers find injection flaws.
Primary Defenses
- Use Prepared Statements (Parameterized Queries)
- Use Stored Procedures
- Escape all User Supplied Input
Prepared Statements
The use of prepared statements with variable binding (aka parameterized queries) is how all developers should first be taught how to write database queries. Parameterized queries force the developer to first define all the SQL code, and then pass in each parameter to the query later. This coding style allows the database to distinguish between code and data, regardless of what user input is supplied.
Prepared statements ensure that an attacker is not able to change the intent of a query, even if SQL commands are inserted by an attacker. In the safe example below, if an attacker were to enter the userID of tom' or '1'='1, the parameterized query would not be vulnerable and would instead look for a username which literally matched the entire string tom' or '1'='1.
PHP
Using mysqli
The MySQL Improved extension handles bound parameters.
$stmt = $db->prepare('update people set name = ? where id = ?'); $stmt->bind_param('si',$name,$id); $stmt->execute();
Using ADODB
ADODB provides a way to prepare, bind and execute all in the same method call.
$dbConnection = NewADOConnection($connectionString); $sqlResult = $dbConnection->Execute( 'SELECT user_id,first_name,last_name FROM users WHERE username=? AND password=?', array($_REQUEST['username'], sha1($_REQUEST['password']) );
Using the ODBC layer
$stmt = odbc_prepare( $conn, 'SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = ?' ); $success = odbc_execute( $stmt, array($email) );
or:
$res = odbc_exec($conn, 'SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = ?', array($email)); $sth = $dbh->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = :email'); $sth->execute(array(':email' => $email));
Using the PDO layer
Here's the long way to do bind parameters.
$dbh = new PDO('mysql:dbname=testdb;host=127.0.0.1', $user, $password); $stmt = $dbh->prepare('INSERT INTO REGISTRY (name, value) VALUES (:name, :value)'); $stmt->bindParam(':name', $name); $stmt->bindParam(':value', $value); // insert one row $name = 'one'; $value = 1; $stmt->execute();
And a shorter way to pass things in.
$dbh = new PDO('mysql:dbname=testdb;host=127.0.0.1', $user, $password); $stmt = $dbh->prepare('UPDATE people SET name = :new_name WHERE id = :id'); $stmt->execute( array('new_name' => $name, 'id' => $id) );
Using PostgreSQL
$result = pg_query_params( $dbh, 'SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = $1', array($email) );
Java
JDBC
The JDBC API has a class called PreparedStatement which allows the programmer to safely insert user-supplied data into a SQL query. The location of each input value in the query string is marked with a question mark. The various set*() methods are then used to safely perform the insertion.
String name = //user input int age = //user input Connection connection = DriverManager.getConnection(...); PreparedStatement statement = connection.prepareStatement( "SELECT * FROM people WHERE lastName = ? AND age > ?" ); statement.setString(1, name); //lastName is a VARCHAR statement.setInt(2, age); //age is an INT ResultSet rs = statement.executeQuery(); while (rs.next()){ //... }
Hibernate
Hibernate uses named parameters to safely insert data into a query. A named parameter consists of a colon, followed by a unique name for the parameter.
String name = //user input int age = //user input Session session = //... Query query = session.createQuery("from People where lastName = :name and age > :age"); query.setString("name", name); query.setInteger("age", age); Iterator people = query.iterate();
Perl
Perl's DBI, available on the CPAN, supports parameterized SQL calls. Both the do method and prepare method support parameters (“placeholders”, as they call them) for most database drivers. For example:
$sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = ?"); foreach my $email (@emails) { $sth->execute($email); $row = $sth->fetchrow_hashref; [...] }
However, you can't use parameterization for identifiers (table names, column names) so you need to use DBI's quote_identifier() method for that:
# Make sure a table name we want to use is safe: my $quoted_table_name = $dbh->quote_identifier($table_name); # Assume @cols contains a list of column names you need to fetch: my $cols = join ',', map { $dbh->quote_identifier($_) } @cols; my $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT $cols FROM $quoted_table_name ...");
You could also avoid writing SQL by hand by using DBIx::Class, SQL::Abstract etc to generate your SQL for you programmatically.
SQLite
Use sqlite3_prepare() to create a statement object.