A vulnerability estimated to affect more than 1 in 10 websites could go lethal with the finding that it can be used to reliably take complete control of the site's underlying server.
Research to be presented at the Black Hat security conference in Amsterdam later this month will show how so-called SQL injection attacks open the door to much more serious exploits that give hackers unfettered access to a website's database and the operating system that runs it.
Penetration tester Bernardo Damele Assumpcao Guimaraes says his techniques prey on design flaws in three of the most popular databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Microsoft SQL Server.
Damele Assumpcao Guimaraes has found a host of new techniques that can wreak even more damage from SQL injection vulnerabilities. With one, he shows how to exploit buffer overflow flaws that may be present in the database. He says he was able to use the method to take complete control of servers running SQL Server before Microsoft patched a buffer overflow vulnerability in February.
A separate technique allows him to exploit a SQL injection vulnerability to finagle a command shell from servers running MySQL and PostgreSQL.