An algorithm for detecting SQL injection vulnerability using black-box testing

• Published in: Journal of ambient intelligence and humanized computing Vol. 11; no. 1; pp. 249 - 266
• Main Authors: Aliero, Muhammad Saidu, Ghani, Imran, Qureshi, Kashif Naseer, Rohani, Mohd Fo’ad
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.01.2020; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Algorithms; Applications programs; Artificial Intelligence; Black boxes; Computational Intelligence; Effectiveness; Engineering; Java; Original Research; Queries; Query languages; Robotics and Automation; Scanners; Semantics; Syntax; User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction; Black box testing; SQL injection; SQL injection vulnerability; SQLI vulnerability scanner; SQL injection attack
• DOI: 10.1007/s12652-019-01235-z
• ISSN: 1868-5137

SQL Injection Attack (SQLIA) is one of the most severe attack that can be used against web database-driven applications. Attackers use SQLIA to obtain unauthorized access and perform unauthorized data modifications due to initial improper input validation by the web application developer. Various studies have shown that, on average, 64% of web applications worldwide are vulnerable to SQLIA due to improper input. To mitigate the devastating problem of SQLIA, this research proposes an automatic black box testing for SQL Injection Vulnerability (SQLIV). This acts to automate an SQLIV assessment in SQLIA. In addition, recent studies have shown that there is a need for improving the effectiveness of existing SQLIVS in order to reduce the cost of manual inspection of vulnerabilities and the risk of being attacked due to inaccurate false negative and false positive results. This research focuses on improving the effectiveness of SQLIVS by proposing an object-oriented approach in its development in order to help and minimize the incidence of false positive and false negative results, as well as to provide room for improving a proposed scanner by potential researchers. To test and validate the accuracy of research work, three vulnerable web applications were developed. Each possesses a different type of vulnerabilities and an experimental evaluation was used to validate the proposed scanner. In addition, an analytical evaluation is used to compare the proposed scanner with the existing academic scanners. The result of the experimental analysis shows significant improvement by achieving high accuracy compared to existing studies. Similarly, the analytical evaluations showed that the proposed scanner is capable of analyzing attacked page response using four different techniques.