Learn Website Hacking [easy]

SQL Injection

SQL injection refers to the act of someone inserting a MySQL statement to be run on your database without your knowledge. Injection usually occurs when you ask a user for input, like their name, and instead of a name they give you a MySQL statement that you will unknowingly run on your database

SQL Injection Example

Below is a sample string that has been gathered from a normal user and a bad user trying to use SQL Injection. We asked the users for their login, which will be used to run a SELECT statement to get their information.
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MySQL & PHP Code:

// a good user's name
$name = "timmy"; 
$query = "SELECT * FROM customers WHERE username = '$name'";
echo "Normal: " . $query . "<br />";

// user input that uses SQL Injection
$name_bad = "' OR 1'"; 

// our MySQL query builder, however, not a very safe one
$query_bad = "SELECT * FROM customers WHERE username = '$name_bad'";

// display what the new query will look like, with injection
echo "Injection: " . $query_bad;

Display:

Normal: SELECT * FROM customers WHERE username = 'timmy'
Injection: SELECT * FROM customers WHERE username = '' OR 1''

The normal query is no problem, as our MySQL statement will just select everything from customers that has a username equal to timmy.
However, the injection attack has actually made our query behave differently than we intended. By using a single quote (') they have ended the string part of our MySQL query