A complete guide to SQL Injection: detection and prevention techniques

1.Introduction 

An SQL injection is a process of applying malicious SQL queries instead of some input to extract data from the database. The breached data can be sensitive information that can be misused by attackers. That data can range from user-id, passwords to very crucial government secrets. It is not surprising that SQLi stands first in the world’s most dangerous security attacks by open web application security project(OWASP) and Imperva. They are so effective that most applications are vulnerable to at least one SQLi. There are many SQLi detections and preventive techniques (referred further as anti-SQLi or ASQLi). With every new emerging prevention technique, the new SQLi method is being found. In this project, we see how well these methods (ASQLi)fare against all types of SQLi methods. Which methods are best in which cases, What are recent trends in these preventive methods? How can we intuitively create new ASQLi for a new SQLi method?

Ref no	Acronym	Full form
[1]	SQLi	SQL injection attacks
-	ASQLi	Anti SQL injection methods
[6]	DAP	database audit and protection
[6]	DIDAFIT	Databases through Fingerprinting Transaction
[3]	SVM	Support Vector Machine
[1]	SQLiGoT	Detecting SQL Injection Attacks using Graph of Tokens and SVM
[9]	SQLiDDS	SQL injection Detection using Document Similarity
[13]	VSM	vector space model
[10]	SQL-IF	SQL-injection free

                                               

Fig 1. How SQL  injection works

2. Motivation 

The motivation behind making an analysis of SQL detection and prevention methods is that SQLi is ranked 1 in most dangerous cybersecurity attacks. According to many sources, it is estimated that a well-developed and famous website will receive around 80-250 SQLi. This makes us need a study that can classify what are latest SQLi and how do we prevent them. How successful are current techniques? New SQLi methods are emerging very frequently and we need a study to be prepared for them. This Is a case where both sides of injection keep on improving until they reach a saturation point. Either attacks become non-preventable or the security becomes unbreachable. But the most likely scenario is completely shifting to new technology to attack/prevent. This does not mean we stop developing ASQLi. So this phase of cybersecurity needs more ASQLi than SQLi. The more we invest in studying them, we have a better chance to develop more of them.

3. Types of SQL Injection

SQL injection is broadly classified into 3 Types:

1. In-band SQL injection
2. Blind injection
3. Out-of-band injection

In-band SQL injection: 

In-band SQL injection (also known as classical SQLi ) is the most common and basic type of the SQL injection attacks. It occurs when an attacker uses a single channel to do both attacks and gather information. This in-band injection is possible in 2 ways i.e. error-based and union-based.

Error-Based SQLi

Error-based SQLi is an in-band SQL injection technique. In this attack, we will type or send something to the server by URL and the server will show us an error. After getting the error, we will decide on who the next target will be. This is helpful to understand the structure of a database server and obtain related information about it.

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