What Is A SQL Injection Database Attack and How Can It Cause Harm?

The SQL injection attack is a database hacking technique that was discovered about 20 years ago. In this technique, the hacker or the attacker submits to information on the website that has been intentionally created in such a manner that it results in misinterpreting the site and undertaking unintended actions.  

To be specific, the website will interpret the data that is submitted by the hacker or the attacker to be a command for the database that it will later execute into the system. This command has the potential to change entries in the database and can even delete the whole database. The results are disastrous and can cost you, dear. This is why organizations must ensure that they take appropriate measures when it comes to the prevention of these SQL database injection attacks.

Organizations should be aware of these attacks

If you are the owner of a business, you will face severe consequences on account of these SQL database injection attacks by people with malicious intent. These attacks can result in confidential data of your database being deleted completely, stolen, and lost. Your company website will become defaced, and you will face the woes of unauthorized access to accounts and systems of the organization resulting in dire consequences. When it comes to these SQL database injection attacks, it is still a significant security concern for databases even though it was discovered almost 20 years ago.

The need for you to be aware

This attack will work when the application has been fooled into executing the code because it has received input from the user in such a form that is usually not expected. To stop such attacks, the company should have proper data validation and sanitization policy in place. This can be done by adding a layer of inspection to ensure that the data that is submitted is not an unusual one, and there are risks of an SQL injection attack. Consult a specialist to help you out with this. 

The need for website sanitization and validation by specialists

The process of sanitization for the database will involve conducting the submitted data via a function to make sure that harmful characters are not carried forward to the SQL query in that data. The process for validation is a little different as it involves the process of adding codes that attempt to ensure that the data submitted is in the expected form for that specific instance. For example, at a basic level, take an email address that should contain the “@” symbol. Only digits are submitted when the data that is numeric like a location zip code is generally expected. The length of the data that has been submitted is not more than the maximum length that is expected, again, for example, a social security number that should not exceed 9 digits.

Specialists from credible data administration company in the USA RemoteDBA states that the process of validation is generally carried in 2 ways. It is done by blacklisting the harmful, dangerous or unwanted characters, or it is done by white listing the permitted characters in the specific circumstance that, of course, implies more work needs to be done by the programmer of the database. You might think that the process for validation is generally conducted from the side of the client; however, hackers can get hold and modify it as well. This is why to be on the safe side; you must ensure that data is validated from your end as well. This will help you to eliminate the risks of an SQL injection attack on your database with success.

Reduce attacks

This hacking technique is so popular that you will face devastating consequences if you do not take precautionary measures to avoid it in your organization. It has a history of being used in the 2016 Presidential Elections of the USA, and it compromised the data of about 200,000 voters in the state of Illinois. It has been used in many high-profile attacks as well against esteemed organizations like CIA, Yahoo, Microsoft, Sony Pictures, and more. Therefore, never take them lightly and work with a good database security team to ensure that your organization is not vulnerable to such a devastating attack on your SQL database.

Take precautions with experts

If you examine your SQL database, you will find that Structured Query Language is the program that deploys Command and Control. This language is used for Microsoft SQL servers, MySQL, and Oracle databases. Today, these databases are used for the back-end of web applications as well as content management systems that use PHP, .NET. ASP and other languages used for scripting a database. This means that the behavior and the content of several sites are built in the database servers.

In case the attack is successful on your database, it will drive the web application or the website to bypass a way to the hacker who will misuse his powers and modify the content of the site for capturing or stealing sensitive data vital for your business. To ensure that you are protected against an SQL injection attack, you first need to identify which of your applications are vulnerable. Make sure that you launch your personal attacks to test the database. This is not a hard task when it comes to the construction of code snippets that you should inject into the SQL query of a database to compromise it. This should be done by your end so that you can test the security of the database and prevent any SQL injection attack to it. 

Therefore, if you are a business owner of a large or small organization, ensure that your SQL database is protected well from any SQL injection risks. You should ensure that you have a skilled team of database security and management specialists to check your database from time to time to ensure that it is free from such attacks in the future.