Neutralizing SQL Injection Attack on Web Application Using Server Side Code Modification

Abstract

SQL Injection attacks pose a very serious security threat to Web applications and web servers. They allow attackers to obtain unrestricted access to the databases underlying the applications and to the potentially sensitive and important information these databases contain. This research, “Neutralizing SQL Injection attack on web application using server side code modification” proposes a method for boosting web security by detecting SQL Injection attacks on web applications by modification on the server code so as to minimize vulnerability and mitigate fraudulent and malicious activities. This method has been implemented on a simple website with a database to register users with an admin that has control privileges. The server used is a local server and the server code was written with PHP as the back end. The front end was designed using MySQL. PHP server side scripting language was used to modify codes. ‘PDO prepare’ a tool to prepare parameters to be executed. The proposed method proved to be efficient in the context of its ability to prevent all types of SQL injection attacks. Acunetix was used to test the vulnerability of the code, and the code was implemented on a simple website with a simple database. Some popular SQL injection attack tools and web application security datasets have been used to validate the model. Unlike most approaches, the proposed method is quite simple to implement yet highly effective. The results obtained are promising with a high accuracy rate for detection of SQL injection attack.