Understanding SQL Injection: Exploiting Vulnerabilities in Web Applications

In day-to-day life, most of the websites you would come across are dynamic, which means that they take the user input and act upon it. When the user supplies input to the application, it is parsed by the interpreter, where the user-supplied input is combined with the application code.

However, a serious security flaw known as SQL injection can occur when the user-supplied input is mishandled. In simple terms, if the application fails to filter the input properly, an attacker can inject malicious code into the application. This injected code will be interpreted as an SQL statement by the application, leading to an SQL injection vulnerability. As a result, the attacker gains unauthorized access and can execute various harmful actions.

Table of Contents

What is SQL Injection?
Set up A Lab Environment for SQL Injection

SQLMap Brief Introductory and Its Installation Steps
Detect and Exploit a SQL Injection
Dumping The Data (in an error-based scenario)
Speeding Up The Process
Reading and Writing Files
Handling Injections in POST Request
Operating System Takeover with SQLMap
Bypassing WAFs
Summary