Top 10 2013-A1-Injection

Consider anyone who can send untrusted data to the system, including external users, internal users, and administrators.

Attacker sends simple text-based attacks that exploit the syntax of the targeted interpreter. Almost any source of data can be an injection vector, including internal sources.

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.

Injection can result in data loss or corruption, lack of accountability, or denial of access. Injection can sometimes lead to complete host takeover.

Consider the business value of the affected data and the platform running the interpreter. All data could be stolen, modified, or deleted. Could your reputation be harmed?

The best way to find out if an application is vulnerable to injection is to verify that all use of interpreters clearly separates untrusted data from the command or query. For SQL calls, this means using bind variables in all prepared statements and stored procedures, and avoiding dynamic queries.

Checking the code is a fast and accurate way to see if the application uses interpreters safely. Code analysis tools can help a security analyst find the use of interpreters and trace the data flow through the application. Penetration testers can validate these issues by crafting exploits that confirm the vulnerability.

Automated dynamic scanning which exercises the application may provide insight into whether some exploitable injection flaws exist. Scanners cannot always reach interpreters and have difficulty detecting whether an attack was successful. Poor error handling makes injection flaws easier to discover

Preventing injection requires keeping untrusted data separate from commands and queries.
 * 1) The preferred option is to use a safe API which avoids the use of the interpreter entirely or provides a parameterized interface.  Be careful with APIs, such as stored procedures, that are parameterized, but can still introduce injection under the hood.


 * 1) If a parameterized API is not available, you should carefully escape special characters using the specific escape syntax for that interpreter. OWASP’s ESAPI provides many of these escaping routines.


 * 1) Positive or “white list” input validation is also recommended, but is not a complete defense as many applications require special characters in their input. If special characters are required, only approaches 1. and 2. above will make their use safe. OWASP’s ESAPI has an extensible library of white list input validation routines.

Scenario #1: The application uses untrusted data in the construction of the following vulnerable SQL call:

String query = "SELECT * FROM accounts WHERE custID='" + request.getParameter("id") + "'";

Scenario #2: Similarly, an application’s blind trust in frameworks may result in queries that are still vulnerable, (e.g., Hibernate Query Language (HQL)): Query HQLQuery = session.createQuery(“FROM accounts WHERE custID='“ + request.getParameter("id") + "'");'''

In both cases, the attacker modifies the ‘id’ parameter value in her browser to send: ' or '1'='1. For example:

http://example.com/app/accountView?id=' or '1'='1 This changes the meaning of both queries to return all the records from the accounts table. More dangerous attacks could modify data or even invoke stored procedures.


 * OWASP SQL Injection Prevention Cheat Sheet
 * OWASP Query Parameterization Cheat Sheet
 * OWASP Command Injection Article
 * OWASP XML eXternal Entity (XXE) Reference Article
 * ASVS: Output Encoding/Escaping Requirements (V6)
 * OWASP Testing Guide: Chapter on SQL Injection Testing
 * CWE Entry 77 on Command Injection
 * CWE Entry 89 on SQL Injection
 * CWE Entry 564 on Hibernate Injection