Web Application Penetration Testing Using SQL Injection Attack

Abstract

A web application is a very important requirement in the information and digitalization era. With the increasing use of the internet and the growing number of web applications, every web application requires an adequate security level to store information safely and avoid cyber attacks. Web applications go through rapid development phases with short turnaround times, challenging to eliminate vulnerabilities. The vulnerability on the web application can be analyzed using the penetration testing method. This research uses penetration testing with the black-box method to test web application security based on the list of most attacks on the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), namely SQL Injection. SQL injection allows attackers to obtain unrestricted access to the databases and potentially collecting sensitive information from databases. This research randomly tested several websites such as government, schools, and other commercial websites with several techniques of SQL injection attack. Testing was carried out on ten websites randomly by looking for gaps to test security using the SQL injection attack. The results of testing conducted 80% of the websites tested have a weakness against SQL injection attacks. Based on this research, SQL injection is still the most prevalent threat for web applications. Further research can explain detailed information about SQL injection with specific techniques and how to prevent this attack.