Mobile devices are facing rapid growth in malicious cyber attacks. Cybercriminals and security experts are in an endless war over data, the former wants to steal, and the latter desires to protect it. With each passing day, criminals develop inventive web and mobile application security threats to compromise users’ sensitive data and access the target’s database using the SQL injection and other malicious techniques.

The aggregate cost and frequency of data breaches and security attacks seem to be growing exponentially. Application usage continues to rise as digital advancement takes a central place in our lives. Application security threats keep increasing, and cybercriminals use sophisticated ways to attack. Why do application vulnerabilities persist? Generally, it is because organizations don’t take necessary precautions to prevent time.

Security of mobile and web applications is essential in this digital age. Security experts, IT teams, developers, and organizations need to implement robust security measures for application security.In this article, we will first discuss the importance of application security and then the SQL injection threat to application security. Let’s start by understanding the importance of application security.

What is application security?

Application security is a process of making mobile and web applications more secure by protecting them from potential threats throughout the application lifecycle. Malicious actors are specialized, organized, and motivated to detect and exploit vulnerabilities in applications to steal intellectual property, sensitive information, and financial data.

Application security defines security measures at the application level that aim to prevent code or data within the application from being hacked or stolen. Application security engineers and administrators are tasked with application security to keep data confidential. Moreover, they are responsible for maintaining data integrity while keeping it accessible to the user and protecting it from being modified even by legitimate users.

These goals require security professionals to identify several things, including

• the organization’s critical assets
• Authorized users and their access levels
• Potential application security vulnerabilities and flaws in data or source code.

Evaluating security threats in real-time, conducting penetration testing, repairing security flaws, and optimizing application security are tasks of an administrator responsible for application development and security.

Why is application security important?

Application security is essential because, in this digital age, applications are usually available over different networks and connected to the cloud. It increases application vulnerabilities and risks to potential security threats and data breaches. Businesses need application security solutions covering all of their applications, from those used internally to famous external apps used on users’ mobile phones. These solutions should cover the complete development lifecycle and must be capable of testing applications for potential and exploitable vulnerabilities.

Application security is important for several reasons. These include

1. Detecting and fixing vulnerabilities reduces the risks of potential threats to application security.
2. Taking a proactive approach for application security is better than a reactive approach. Being proactive allows defenders to detect and neutralize attacks ahead of the damage.
3. Application vulnerabilities are common. However, not all of them are critical, but some uncritical flaws can be combined to use in attack chains. Mitigating security vulnerabilities helps reduce the overall impacts of potential data breaches.
4. Organizations move their applications, code, and data into the cloud, which can increase attacks against these assets. Application security helps mitigate the impact of these attacks.

How does application security work?

Application security measures include optimizing security practices in the application development lifecycle. All activities should reduce the likelihood that criminals can gain access to applications and data. Any action taken to ensure the security of an application is a security control or countermeasure.

An application firewall is a countermeasure that determines how data is handled and how files are executed based on a certain installed program. Moreover, routers are the most common countermeasure for hardware. They help prevent the IP address of an individual device from being visible on the internet.

Other security controls include

• Encryption and decryption
• Convention firewalls
• Antivirus programs
• Biometric authentication systems
• Spyware detection and removal programs.

As we have learned the importance of application security, now let’s move to discuss one of the major threats to application security, that is SQL injection attack.

What is SQL injection?

If you are familiar with the cyber world, you must have heard about SQL injection or SQLi attacks. SQL injection consists of the injection of a SQL query using input data from the client to the application. A successful SQL injection attack can read sensitive data, modify the database, execute administrative operations on the database, and recover the content of the given file. It is designed for operating database systems, including Oracle, MySQL, SQLite, or Microsoft SQL Server.

SQL injection attack is capable of

• Reading sensitive data from the application database
• Inserting, modifying, or deleting data from the database
• Getting content of a specific file present on the database
• Enforcing administrative operations such as shutting down the DBMS

With robust security measures and mitigation controls, the SQL injection attack can leave applications at high risk of data compromise. It impacts the confidentiality and integrity of data as well as the authorization and authentication of applications. A successful SQL injection attack can empower criminals to steal sensitive data, such as user credentials, intellectual property, financial information, or trade secrets by misusing the existing vulnerabilities in a web or mobile application.

Threat Modeling

• SQL injection attacks enable criminals to spoof identity, cause repudiation issues, tamper with existing data, destroy data or make it unavailable, allow complete disclosure of data on applications and become administrators of database servers.
• The severity of SQL injection attacks is restricted by the criminal’s skill and imagination. To a lesser extent, defense-in-depth security controls, such as low privilege connection to database servers.
• SQLi is common with ASP and PHP applications due to the prevalence of older functional interfaces.

Types of SQL Injection Attacks

Now as we understand SQL injection attacks, it becomes essential to explore SQLi attack types. SQL injection is categorized into three groups.

1. In-band SQLi
2. Out-of-band SQLi
3. Inferential SQL

In-band SQLi

In-band SQLi is a commonly used and easily exploitable SQLi attack. It refers to the attack scenario where a malicious actor can launch an attack and steal database information via the same communication channel. There are two types of in-band SQL injection attacks, error-based, and union-based SQLi.

• Error-based SQL injection_ It’s a type where the attacker uses an error message thrown by a database server to get information on database structure. Most of the time, hackers replicate the entire database using error-based SQLi attacks.
• Union-based SQL injection_ Union-based SQLi is based on the principle of SQL UNION operation. In this technique, criminals get the benefits of extracting data from the database by expanding results returned by the original query.

Inferential or Blind SQL injection

Inferential SQLi relies on the database server’s behavior and response patterns, where criminals observe the indirect clues closely. For this observation, the hacker sends server data payloads. This technique is called Blind SQLi because the hacker does not get data from the application database, making it impossible to get information about the attack in-band. Inferential SQLi is classified into two methods.

• Boolean_ Here the criminal sends a query to the database prompting the application to return results. The result varies based on the query, true or false. However, based on results, the data modifies or stays the same in the HTTP response. Based on it, hackers find out whether the result is true or false in the text generated.
• Time-based_ When a query is sent to the database by the criminal, the database waits for a few seconds to respond. As the database responds, the attacker analyzes whether the query is true or false. The HTTP response is generated based on results, either instantly or after some time.

Out-of-band SQL injection

This technique relies on certain features of the SQL-enabled database. It includes the submission of an HTTP or DNS request to the SQL server having a SQL statement. The out-of-band SQLi attack transmits the database content on success and then escalates privileges and performs the same actions as other SQLi attacks perform.

How to prevent SQL injection attacks for application security?

For protection applications and mitigate SQL injection attacks, system administrators, developers, and database administrators should follow these steps.

• Avoid using shared database accounts among different users, applications, or websites,
• Make sure to keep all application components up to date using the latest security patches and leaving no space for vulnerabilities.
• Limite the attack surface by avoiding any functionality that is no longer required to prevent it from hackers.
• Monitor SQL statements regularly from database-connected applications.
• Always keep database account credentials unique and encrypted.
• Error messages are key for criminals to understand your database architecture. Make sure to display minimal information.

Final Words

SQL injection attacks can be devastating for businesses. These attacks may seem simple, but they can cost organizations hefty sums of money and lead to a lack of customer trust. Potential threats to application security can put organizations’ reputations at risk. Therefore, it’s essential to check enterprise applications for potential vulnerabilities within the enterprise infrastructure and after being deployed. Implement robust security measures throughout the application development lifecycle.