Tools and Methods used in

Cybercrime
UNIT 3
Objectives

• Proxy servers and anonymizers

• Password cracking
• Keyloggers and spywares
• Overview of virus and worms
• Trojan horses and backdoors
• Steganography
• DoS and DDoS attacks
• SQL injection
• Buffer overflow
Stages of an attack on network

1. Initial covering: two stages

1. Reconnaissance- social networking websites
2. Uncovers information on company’s IP
2. Network probe:
1. Ping sweep- seek out potential targets
2. Port scanning
3. Crossing the line toward electronic crime:
1. Commits computer crime by exploiting possible holes on the target
system
Stages of an attack on network
4. Capturing the network:
- attackers attempts to own the network
- uses tools to remove any evidence of the attack
- trojan horses, backdoors
5. Grab the data:
- attacker has captured the network
- steal confidential data, customer CC information, deface
webpages…
6. Covering the attack:
- extend misuse of the attack without being detected.
- start a fresh reconnaissance to a related target system
- continue use of resources
- remove evidence of hacking
Various tools used for the attack

• Proxy severs and Anonymizers

• Phishing
• Password cracking
• Keyloggers and spywares
• Virus and Worms
• Trojan horses and Backdoors
• Steganography
• SQL injection
• DoS and DDoS attack tools
• Buffer overflow
1. Proxy severs and Anonymizers

• A proxy server is a dedicated computer or a software system running

on a computer that acts as an intermediary between an endpoint
device, such as a computer, and another server from which a user or
client is requesting a service.
• A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such
as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a
different server and the proxy server evaluates the request as a way
to simplify and control its complexity.
Purpose of a proxy server

• Improve Performance:
• Filter Requests
• Keep system behind the curtain
• Used as IP address multiplexer
• Its Cache memory can serve all users
Attack on this: the attacker first connects to a proxy server-
establishes connection with the target through existing connection
with the proxy.
An Anonymizer

• An anonymizer or an anonymous proxy is a tool that attempts to

make activity on the Internet untraceable.
• It is a proxy server computer that acts as an intermediary and privacy
shield between a client computer and the rest of the Internet.
• It accesses the Internet on the user's behalf, protecting personal
information by hiding the client computer's identifying information.
• For example, large news outlets such as CNN target the viewers
according to region and give different information to different
populations
2. Phishing

• Stealing personal and financial data

• Also can infect systems with viruses
• A method of online ID theft
How Phishing works?

1. Planning : use mass mailing and address collection techniques-

spammers
2. Setup : E-Mail / webpage to collect data about the target
3. Attack : send a phony message to the target
4. Collection: record the information obtained
5. Identity theft and fraud: use information to commit fraud or
illegal purchases
3. Password Cracking
• password cracking is the process of recovering passwords from
data that have been stored in or transmitted by a computer
system.
• A common approach (brute-force attack) is to try guesses
repeatedly for the password and check them against an available
cryptographic hash of the password.
The purpose of password cracking

• help a user recover a forgotten password

• to gain unauthorized access to a system,
• or as a preventive measure by System Administrators to check for
easily crackable passwords
Manual Password Cracking Algorithm

• Find a valid user

•Create a list of possible passwords
•Rank the passwords from high probability to low
•Key in each password
•If the system allows you in - Success
•Else try till success
examples of guessable passwords

• Blank
• Words like “passcode” ,”password”, “admin”
• Series of letters “QWERTY”
• User’ s name or login name
• Name of the user’s friend/relative/pet
• User’s birth place, DOB
• Vehicle number, office number ..
• Name of celebrity
• Simple modification of one of the precedings, suffixing 1 …
Categories of password cracking attacks:

• Online attacks
• Offline attacks
• Non-electronic attacks
• Social engineering
• Shoulder surfing
• Dumpster diving
Online attacks

• An attacker may create a script- automated program- to try each

password
• Most popular online attack;- man-in-the-middle attack or bucket-
brigade attack
• Used to obtain passwords for E-mail accounts on public websites like
gmail, yahoomail
• Also to get passwords for financial websites
Offline attacks

• Are performed from a location other than the target where these
passwords reside or are used
• Require physical access to the computer and copying the password
Types of Password Attacks

• Password Guessing
• Attackers can guess passwords locally or remotely using either a manual or
automated approach
• Dictionary attacks
• work on the assumption that most passwords consist of whole words, dates,
or numbers taken from a dictionary.
• Hybrid password
• assume that network administrators push users to make their passwords at
least slightly different from a word that appears in a dictionary.
Weak passwords

• The password contains less than eight characters

• The password is a word found in a dictionary (English or foreign)
• The password is a common usage word such as:
• Names of family, pets, friends, co-workers, fantasy characters, etc.
• Computer terms and names, commands, sites, companies, hardware,
software.
• The words "<Company Name>", "sanjose", "sanfran" or any derivation.
• Birthdays and other personal information such as addresses and
phone numbers.
• Word or number patterns like aaabbb, qwerty, zyxwvuts, 123321, etc.
• Any of the above spelled backwards.
• Any of the above preceded or followed by a digit (e.g., secret1,1secret
Strong Passwords

• Contain both upper and lower case characters (e.g., a-z, A-Z)
• Have digits and punctuation characters as well as letters e.g., 0-9, @#$
%^&*()_+|~-=\`{}[]:";'<>?,./)
• Are at least eight alphanumeric characters long.
• Are not a word in any language, slang, dialect, jargon, etc.
• Are not based on personal information, names of family, etc.
• Passwords should never be written down or stored on-line.
• Try to create passwords that can be easily remembered.
• One way to do this is create a password based on a song title, affirmation,
or other phrase.
• For example, the phrase might be: "This May Be One Way To Remember"
• and the password could be: "TmB1w2R!" or "Tmb1W>r~" or some other
variation.
Random passwords

• Secure Password Generator

• Password Length:
• Include Symbols:
• ( e.g. @#$% )
• Include Numbers:
• ( e.g. 123456 )
• Include Lowercase Characters:
• ( e.g. abcdefgh )
• Include Uppercase Characters:
• ( e.g. ABCDEFGH )
Random passwords

• Exclude Similar Characters:

• ( e.g. i, l, 1, L, o, 0, O )
• Exclude Ambiguous Characters:
• ({}[]()/\'"`~,;:.<>)
• Generate On The Client Side:
• ( do NOT send across the Internet )
• Auto-Select:
• ( select the password automatically )
• Save My Preference:
• ( save all the settings above for later use )
• Load My Settings Anywhere:
• URL to load my settings on other computers quickly
• Your New Password:
• Remember your password:
• Remember your password with the first letters of each word in this sentence.
• To prevent your passwords from being hacked by social engineering, brute force or dictionary attack
method, you should notice that:
Random passwords

• To prevent your passwords from being hacked by social engineering, brute

force or dictionary attack method, you should notice that:
• 1. Do not use the same password for multiple important accounts.
• 2. Use a password that has at least 16 characters, use at least one number,
one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter and one special symbol.
• 3. Do not use the names of your families, friends or pets in your passwords.
• 4. Do not use postcodes, house numbers, phone numbers, birthdates, ID
card numbers, social security numbers, and so on in your passwords.
• 5. Do not use any dictionary word in your passwords.
• 6. Do not use something that can be cloned( but you can't change ) as your
passwords, such as your fingerprints.
• 7. Do not let your Web browsers( FireFox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, IE ) store
your passwords, since all passwords saved in Web browsers can be revealed
easily.
Random passwords

• 8. Do not log in to important accounts on the computers of others, or when connected to a

public Wi-Fi hotspot, Tor, free VPN or web proxy.
• 9. Do not send sensitive information online via HTTP or FTP connections, because
messages in these connections can be sniffed with very little effort. You should use
encrypted connections such as HTTPS and SFTP whenever possible.
• 10. When travelling, you can encrypt your Internet connections before they leave your
laptop, tablet, mobile phone or router. For example, you can set up a private VPN on your
own server( home computer, dedicated server or VPS ) and connect to it. Alternatively, you
can set up an encrypted SSH tunnel between your router and your home computer( or a
remote server of your own ) with PuTTY and connect your programs( e.g. FireFox ) to
PuTTY. Then even if somebody captures your data as it is transmitted between your device(
e.g. laptop, iPhone, iPad ) and your server with a packet sniffer, he'll won't be able to steal
your data and passwords from the encrypted streaming data.
• 11. How secure is my password? Perhaps you believe that your passwords are very strong,
difficult to hack. But if a hacker has stolen your username and the MD5 hash value of your
password from a company's server, and the rainbow table of the hacker contains this MD5
hash, then your password will be cracked quickly.
•
Random passwords

• To check the strength of your passwords and know whether they're inside the
popular rainbow tables, you can convert your passwords to MD5 hashes on
this MD5 hash generator, then decrypt your passwords by submitting these
hashes to an online MD5 decryption service. For instance, your password is
"0123456789A", using the brute-force method, it may take a computer almost
one year to crack your password, but if you decrypt it by submitting its MD5
hash( C8E7279CD035B23BB9C0F1F954DFF5B3 ) to a MD5 decryption website,
how long will it take to crack it? You can perform the test yourself.
• 12. It's recommended to change your passwords every 10 weeks.
• 13. It's recommended that you remember a few master passwords, store other
passwords in a plain text file and encrypt this file with 7-Zip, GPG or a disk
encryption software such as BitLocker, or manage your passwords with a
password management software.
• 14. Encrypt and backup your passwords to different locations, then if you lost
access to your computer or account, you can retrieve your passwords back
quickly.
Random passwords

• 15. Turn on 2-step authentication whenever possible.

• 16. Do not store your critical passwords in the cloud.
• 17. Access important websites( e.g. Paypal ) from bookmarks directly, otherwise
please check its domain name carefully, it's a good idea to check the popularity of
a website with Alexa toolbar to ensure that it's not a phishing site before entering
your password.
• 18. Protect your computer with firewall and antivirus software, download
software from reputable sites only, and verify the MD5 or SHA1 checksum of the
installation package whenever possible.
• 19. Be careful when using online paste tools and screen capture tools, do not let
them to upload your passwords to the cloud.
• 20. If there are important files on your computer, and it can be accessed by
others, check if there are hardware keyloggers( e.g. wireless keyboard sniffer ),
software keyloggers and hidden cameras when you feel it's necessary.
• 21. If you're a webmaster, do not store the users passwords in the database, you
should store the salted hash values of passwords inste
4. keyloggers

• Keystroke logging, often referred to as keylogging or keyboard

capturing, is the action of recording (or logging) the keys struck on a
keyboard, typically in a covert manner so that the person using the
keyboard is unaware that their actions are being monitored.
• It has uses in the study of human–computer interaction.
• There are numerous keylogging methods, ranging from hardware and
software-based approaches to acoustic analysis.
Software-based keyloggers

• Software-based keyloggers use the target computer’s operating

system in various ways, including: imitating a virtual machine, acting
as the keyboard driver (kernel-based), using the application
programming interface to watch keyboard strokes (API-based),
recording information submitted on web-based forms (Form Grabber
based) or capturing network traffic associated with HTTP POST events
to steal passwords (Packet analyzers).
• Usually consists of two files DLL and EXE
Hardware keyloggers

• installing a hardware circuit between the keyboard and the computer

that logs keyboard stroke activity (keyboard hardware).
• Target- ATMs
Acoustic keylogging

• Acoustic keylogging monitors the sound created by each individual

keystroke and uses the subtly different acoustic signature that each
key emits to analyze and determine what the target computer’s user
is typing.
AntiKeylogger

• An anti-keylogger (or anti–keystroke logger) is a type of software

specifically designed for the detection of keystroke logger software;
often, such software will also incorporate the ability to delete or at
least immobilize hidden keystroke logger software on your computer.
Benefits of Antikeyloggers
Spywares

• Spyware is software that aims to gather information about a person

or organization without their knowledge and that may send such
information to another entity without the consumer's consent, or
that asserts control over a computer without the consumer's
knowledge
5. Virus and Worms

• A computer virus is a malware program that, when executed,

replicates by inserting copies of itself (possibly modified) into other
computer programs, data files, or the boot sector of the hard drive;
when this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be
"infected".
Some typical virus actions

• Display a message to prompt an action

• Delete files in the system
• Scramble data on a hard disk
• Cause erratic screen behavior
• Halt the system
• Replicate themselves to propagate further harm
Virus spread through

• The internet
• A stand alone PC
• Local networks
Difference between virus and worm
Types of viruses

• Boot sector viruses

• Program viruses
• Multipartite viruses
• Stealth viruses
• Polymorphic viruses
• Macroviruses
• Active X and Java contrl
Boot sector viruses

• A boot sector virus is a computer virus that infects a storage device's

master boot record (MBR).
• It is not mandatory that a boot sector virus successfully boot the
victim's PC to infect it.
• As a result, even non-bootable media can trigger the spread of boot
sector viruses.
• These viruses copy their infected code either to the floppy disk's boot
sector or to the hard disk's partition table. During start-up, the virus
gets loaded to the computer's memory. As soon as the virus is saved
to the memory, it infects the non-infected disks used by the system.
• The propagation of boot sector viruses has become very rare since
the decline of floppy disks. Also, present-day operating systems
include boot-sector safeguards that make it difficult for boot sector
viruses to infect them.
Program viruses

• A program virus becomes active when the program file (usually with
extensions .BIN, .COM, .EXE, .OVL, .DRV) carrying the virus is opened.
• Once active, the virus will make copies of itself and will infect other
programs on the computer.
Multipartite viruses

• A multipartite virus is a fast-moving virus that uses file infectors or boot

infectors to attack the boot sector and executable files simultaneously.
• Most viruses either affect the boot sector, the system or the program files.
• The multipartite virus can affect both the boot sector and the program files at
the same time, thus causing more damage than any other kind of virus.
• When the boot sector is infected, simply turning on the computer will trigger
a boot sector virus because it latches on to the hard drive that contains the
data that is needed to start the computer. Once the virus has been triggered,
destructive payloads are launched throughout the program files.
• A multipartite virus infects computer systems multiple times and at different
times. In order for it to be eradicated, the entire virus must be removed from
the system.
• A multipartite virus is also known as a hybrid virus.
Stealth viruses

• A stealth virus is a hidden computer virus that attacks operating

system processes and averts typical anti-virus or anti-malware scans.
Stealth viruses hide in files, partitions and boot sectors and are adept
at deliberately avoiding detection.

Stealth virus eradication requires advanced anti-virus software or a

clean system reboot.
Polymorphic viruses

• A polymorphic virus is a complicated computer virus that affects data

types and functions.
• It is a self-encrypted virus designed to avoid detection by a scanner.
• Upon infection, the polymorphic virus duplicates itself by creating
usable, albeit slightly modified, copies of itself.

• Polymorphism, in computing terms, means that a single definition

can be used with varying amounts of data. In order for scanners to
detect this type of virus, brute-force programs must be written to
combat and detect the polymorphic virus with novel variant
configurations.
Macroviruses

• A macro virus is a computer virus that "infects" a Microsoft Word or

similar application and causes a sequence of actions to be
performed automatically when the application is started or
something else triggers it.
Active X and Java contrl

• ActiveX and Java were created for web page designers to incorporate
a wide array of impressive effects on web pages, giving movement
and added dimension to the previously "flat" web pages.
• To operate properly, these ActiveX controls and Java applets need to
gain access to your hard disk. Insufficient memory and bandwidth
problems necessitate this approach. Although this desktop access
provides a wealth of beneficial applications of these controls and
applets, malicious code developers have the same access. They are
now using it to read and delete or corrupt files, access RAM, and
even access files on computers attached via a LAN.
6. Trojan horses and Backdoors

• A Trojan horse, or Trojan, in computing is generally a non-self-

replicating type of malware program containing malicious code that,
when executed, carries out actions determined by the nature of the
Trojan, typically causing loss or theft of data, and possible system
harm
Examples of threats by trojans
• Erase, overwrite or corrupt data on a computer
• Help to spread other malware such as viruses- dropper trojan
• Deactivate or interface with antivirus and firewall programs
• Allow remote access to your computer- remote access trojan
• Upload and download files
• Gather E-mail address and use for spam
• Log keystrokes to steal information – pwds, CC numbers
• Copy fake links to false websites
• slowdown, restart or shutdown the system
• Disable task manager
• Disable the control panel
Backdoors
• A backdoor in a computer system is a method of bypassing
normal authentication, securing unauthorized remote access to a
computer, obtaining access to plaintext, and so on, while
attempting to remain undetected.
• Also called a trapdoor. An undocumented way of gaining access
to a program, online service or an entire computer system.
• The backdoor is written by the programmer who creates the code
for the program. It is often only known by the programmer. A
backdoor is a potential security risk.
Functions of backdoors

Allows an attacker to
• create, delete, rename, copy or edit any file
• Execute commands to change system settings
• Alter the windows registry
• Run, control and terminate applications
• Install arbitrary software and parasites
• Control computer hardware devices,
• Shutdown or restart computer
Functions of backdoors

• Steals sensitive personal information, valuable documents,

passwords, login name…
• Records keystrokes, captures screenshots
• Sends gathered data to predefined E-mail addresses
• Infects files, corrupts installed apps, damages entire system
• Distributes infected files to remote computers
• Installs hidden FTP server
• Degrades internet connection and overall system performance
• Decreases system security
• Provides no uninstall feature, hides processes, files and other objects
Examples of Backdoor trojans
• Back Orifice : for remote system administration
• Bifrost : can infect Win95 through Vista, execute arbitrary code
• SAP backdoors : infects SAP business objects
• Onapsis Bizploit: Onapsis Bizploit is an SAP penetration testing
framework to assist security professionals in the discovery,
exploration, vulnerability assessment and exploitation phases of
specialized SAP security assessment
How to protect from Trojan Horses and
backdoors

• Stay away from suspect websites/ links

• Surf on the web cautiously : avoid P2P networks

• Install antivirus/ Trojan remover software

7. Steganography

• Steganography (from Greek steganos, or "covered," and graphie, or

"writing") is the hiding of a secret message within an ordinary
message and the extraction of it at its destination.
• Steganography takes cryptography a step farther by hiding an
encrypted message so that no one suspects it exists. Ideally, anyone
scanning your data will fail to know it contains encrypted data.
• Other names: data hiding, information hiding, digital watermarking
digital watermarking

• Digital watermarking is the act of hiding a message (trademark)

related to a digital signal (i.e. an image, song, video) within the signal
itself.
• It is a concept closely related to steganography, in that they both hide
a message inside a digital signal.
• However, what separates them is their goal.
• Watermarking tries to hide a message related to the actual content
of the digital signal,
• while in steganography the digital signal has no relation to the
message, and it is merely used as a cover to hide its existence.
Difference between steganography and
cryptography
• Cryptography is the study of hiding information, while Steganography
deals with composing hidden messages so that only the sender and
the receiver know that the message even exists.
• In Steganography, only the sender and the receiver know the
existence of the message, whereas in cryptography the existence of
the encrypted message is visible to the world.
• Due to this, Steganography removes the unwanted attention coming
to the hidden message.
• Cryptographic methods try to protect the content of a message,
while Steganography uses methods that would hide both the
message as well as the content.
• By combining Steganography and Cryptography one can achieve
better security.
Steganalysis

• Steganalysis is the study of detecting messages hidden using

steganography;
• The goal of steganalysis is to identify suspected packages, determine
whether or not they have a payload encoded into them, and, if
possible, recover that payload.
8.DoS and DDoS attacks

• In computing, a denial-of-service (DoS) or distributed denial-of-

service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make a machine or network
resource unavailable to its intended users.
• A DoS attack generally consists of efforts to temporarily or
indefinitely interrupt or suspend services of a host connected to the
Internet.
Symptoms of DoS attacks

• Slow network performance

• Unavailability of a particular website
• Inability to access any website
• Dramatic increase in number of Spam E-mails received
A DoS attack may do the following

• Flood the traffic, thereby preventing network traffic

• Disrupt connections between two systems- preventing access to
service
• Prevent a particular individual from accessing a service
• Disrupt service to a specific system or person
Classification of DoS

• Bandwidth attacks
• Logic attacks
• Protocol attacks
• Unintentional DoS attack
Bandwidth attacks

• The most common DoS attacks

• target the computer's network bandwidth or connectivity.
• Bandwidth attacks flood the network with such a high volume of
traffic, that all available network resources are consumed and
legitimate user requests can not get through.
Logic attacks

• An attacker sends more requests to a server than it can handle,

usually in a relentless manner, until the server buckles and gives in to
the attacker. Once this type of attack ends, the server can return to
normal operation.
• Generally, a logic attack requires your server to have a discoverable
weakness that the attacker can locate and then use against it.
• Because of this prerequisite, it is usually easy to prevent by keeping
your server software and hardware up-to-date with the latest
security patches and firmware respectively
Protocol attacks

• Denial of service attacks may take advantage of certain standard

protocol features.
• Several attacks capitalize on the fact that IP source addresses can be
spoofed.
• In addition, connection depletion attacks take advantage of the fact
that many connection-oriented protocols require servers to maintain
state information after a connection request is made but before the
connection is fully established.
• The most common connection depletion attack is SYN flooding
Unintentional DoS attack

• This describes a situation where a website ends up denied, not due

to a deliberate attack by a single individual or group of individuals,
but simply due to a sudden enormous spike in popularity.
• This can happen when an extremely popular website posts a
prominent link to a second, less well-prepared site, for example, as
part of a news story.
Types or levels of DoS attacks

• Flood attack
• Ping of death attack
• SYN attack
• Teardrop attack
• Smurf attack
• nuke
Flood attack
• Flooding is a Denial of Service (DoS) attack that is designed to
bring a network or service down by flooding it with large amounts
of traffic.
• Flood attacks occur when a network or service becomes so
weighed down with packets initiating incomplete connection
requests that it can no longer process genuine connection
requests.
• By flooding a server or host with connections that cannot be
completed, the flood attack eventually fills the hosts memory
buffer. Once this buffer is full no further connections can be
made, and the result is a Denial of Service.
ping of death attack

• ping of death is a denial of service (DoS) attack caused by an attacker

deliberately sending an IP packet larger than the 65,536 bytes
allowed by the IP protocol.
SYN attack

• A SYN flood occurs when a host sends a flood of TCP/SYN packets,

often with a forged sender address.
• Each of these packets are handled like a connection request, causing
the server to spawn a half-open connection, by sending back a
TCP/SYN-ACK packet (Acknowledge), and waiting for a packet in
response from the sender address (response to the ACK Packet).
• However, because the sender address is forged, the response never
comes. These half-open connections saturate the number of available
connections the server can make, keeping it from responding to
legitimate requests until after the attack ends
SYN attack
Teardrop attack

• A teardrop attack is a denial of service (DoS) attack conducted by

targeting TCP/IP fragmentation reassembly codes.
• This attack causes fragmented packets to overlap one another on the
host receipt;
• the host attempts to reconstruct them during the process but fails.
• Gigantic payloads are sent to the machine that is being targeted,
causing system crashes.
Smurf attack

• A smurf attack is a type of denial of service attack in which a system

is flooded with spoofed ping messages.
• This creates high computer network traffic on the victim’s network,
which often renders it unresponsive.
Nuke

• A Nuke is an old denial-of-service attack against computer networks

consisting of fragmented or otherwise invalid ICMP packets sent to
the target, achieved by using a modified ping utility to repeatedly
send this corrupt data, thus slowing down the affected computer
until it comes to a complete stop.
DDoS attack

• A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make

an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from
multiple sources.
• They target a wide variety of important resources, from banks to
news websites, and present a major challenge to making sure people
can publish and access important information.
how to prevent dos/ddos attacks

• Filtering: Routers at the edge of the network can be trained to spot

and drop DDOS connections, preventing them from slowing the
network or the server.
• Moving: If the attack is pointed at a specific IP address, the site’s IP
can be changed.
• Blackholing: A host may simply “blackhole” a site that is being
DDOSed, directing all traffic to it to an address that doesn’t exist. This
is normally a last resort.
9. SQL Injection

• SQL injection is a code injection technique, used to attack data-

driven applications, in which malicious SQL statements are inserted
into an entry field for execution (e.g. to dump the database contents
to the attacker).
• It is the type of attack that takes advantage of improper coding of
your web applications that allows hacker to inject SQL commands
into say a login form to allow them to gain access to the data held
within your database.
What an attacker can do?

* ByPassing Logins : by obtaining username and passwords

* Accessing secret data : reconnaissance

* Adding new data or Modifying contents of website: INSERT/UPDATE

* Shutting down the My SQL server

steps for SQL Injection attack

• Step 1: Finding Vulnerable Website:

• find the Vulnerable websites(hackable websites) using Google Dork list.
• google dork is searching for vulnerable websites using the google searching tricks
• use “inurl:” command for finding the vulnerable websites.
• Some Examples:
inurl:index.php?id=
inurl:gallery.php?id=
inurl:article.php?id=
inurl:pageid=
• How to use?
copy one of the above command and paste in the google search engine
box.
Hit enter.
You can get list of web sites.
We have to visit the websites one by one for checking the vulnerability.
• Step 2: Checking the Vulnerability:
• Now we should check the vulnerability of websites.
• In order to check the vulnerability ,add the single quotes(‘) at the end of the
url and hit enter.
• For eg:
http://www.victimsite.com/index.php?id=2'
• If the page remains in same page or showing that page not found or showing
some other webpages. Then it is not vulnerable.
• If it showing any errors which is related to sql query, then it is vulnerable.
• Step 3: Finding Number of columns:
• Now we have found the website is vulnerable.
• Next step is to find the number of columns in the table.
For that replace the single quotes(‘) with “order by n” statement
• Change the n from 1,2,3,4,,5,6,…n. Until you get the error like “unknown column “.
• For eg:

• http://www.victimsite.com/index.php?id=2 order by 1
http://www.victimsite.com/index.php?id=2 order by 2
http://www.victimsite.com/index.php?id=2 order by 3
http://www.victimsite.com/index.php?id=2 order by 4
…..
http://www.victimsite.com/index.php?id=2 order by 8(error)
so now x=8 , The number of column is x-1 i.e, 7.
• Step 4: Displaying the Vulnerable columns:
• Using “union select columns_sequence” we can find the vulnerable part
of the table. Replace the “order by n” with this statement.
• And change the id value to negative
• Replace the columns_sequence with the no from 1 to x-1(number of
columns) separated with commas(,).
• For eg:
if the number of columns is 7 ,then the query is as follow:

• http://www.victimsite.com/index.php?id=-2 union select

1,2,3,4,5,6,7—
Blind SQL injection

• Blind SQL Injection is used when a web application is vulnerable to an

SQL injection but the results of the injection are not visible to the
attacker.
• The page with the vulnerability may not be one that displays data but
will display differently depending on the results of a logical statement
injected into the legitimate SQL statement called for that page.
• This type of attack can become time-intensive because a new
statement must be crafted for each bit recovered.
• There are several tools that can automate these attacks once the
location of the vulnerability and the target information has been
established
How to prevent SQL Injection attacks

• Input validation
• Replace all single quotes to two single quotes
• Sanitize the input: clean characters like ;, --, select, etc
• Numeric values should be checked while accepting a query string value
• Keep all text boxes and form fields short
• Modify error reports
• SQL errors should not be displayed to the outside world
• Other preventions
• Never use default system accounts for SQL server 2000
• Isolate database server and webserver: different machines
• Extended stored procedures, user defined functions should be moved to an
isolated server.
10. Buffer overflow

• In computer security and programming, a buffer overflow, or buffer

overrun, is an anomaly where a program, while writing data to a
buffer, overruns the buffer's boundary and overwrites adjacent
memory. This is a special case of violation of memory safety.
• This may result in erratic program behavior
• Buffer overflows are not easy to discover and even when one is
discovered, it is generally extremely difficult to exploit.
• In a classic buffer overflow exploit, the attacker sends data to a
program, which it stores in an undersized stack buffer. The result
is that information on the call stack is overwritten, including the
function's return pointer.
• The data sets the value of the return pointer so that when the
function returns, it transfers control to malicious code contained
in the attacker's data.
• At the code level, buffer overflow vulnerabilities usually involve
the violation of a programmer's assumptions.
• Many memory manipulation functions in C and C++ do not
perform bounds checking and can easily overwrite the allocated
bounds of the buffers they operate upon.
• Even bounded functions, such as strncpy(), can cause
vulnerabilities when used incorrectly.
• The combination of memory manipulation and mistaken
assumptions about the size or makeup of a piece of data is the
root cause of most buffer overflows.
example
• The code in this example also relies on user input to control its
behavior, but it adds a level of indirection with the use of the bounded
memory copy function memcpy().
• This function accepts a destination buffer, a source buffer, and the
number of bytes to copy. The input buffer is filled by a bounded call to
read(), but the user specifies the number of bytes that memcpy()
copies.
... char buf[64], in[MAX_SIZE];
printf("Enter buffer contents:\n");
read(0, in, MAX_SIZE-1);
printf("Bytes to copy:\n");
scanf("%d", &bytes);
memcpy(buf, in, bytes); ...
• Note: This type of buffer overflow vulnerability (where a program reads
data and then trusts a value from the data in subsequent memory
operations on the remaining data) has turned up with some frequency
in image, audio, and other file processing libraries.
Types of buffer overflow

• stack-based buffer overflow

• Heap buffer overflow
• NOPs
stack-based buffer overflow

• A stack-based buffer overflow condition is a condition where the

buffer being overwritten is allocated on the stack
• Attack may exploit this to manipulate the program by
• Changing the local variable
• Changing the return address
• Changing the function pointer or exception handler
heap buffer overflow

• A heap overflow is a type of buffer overflow that occurs in the heap

data area.
• Heap overflows are exploitable in a different manner to that of
stack-based overflows.
• Memory on the heap is dynamically allocated by the application at
run-time and typically contains program data.
• Exploitation is performed by corrupting this data in specific ways to
cause the application to overwrite internal structures such as linked
list pointers.
• The canonical heap overflow technique overwrites dynamic memory
allocation linkage (such as malloc meta data) and uses the resulting
pointer exchange to overwrite a program function pointer.
NOP-sled

• A NOP-sled is the oldest and most widely known technique for

successfully exploiting a stack buffer overflow.
• It solves the problem of finding the exact address of the buffer by
effectively increasing the size of the target area.
• To do this, much larger sections of the stack are corrupted with the
no-op machine instruction. At the end of the attacker-supplied data,
after the no-op instructions, the attacker places an instruction to
perform a relative jump to the top of the buffer where the shellcode
is located.
• This collection of no-ops is referred to as the "NOP-sled" because if
the return address is overwritten with any address within the no-op
region of the buffer it will "slide" down the no-ops until it is
redirected to the actual malicious code by the jump at the end.
How to minimize buffer overflow

• Assessment of secure code manually

• Disable stack execution
• Compiler tools
• Dynamic run-time checks
• Various tools are used to detect/ defend buffer overflow
• stackGaurd
• Propolice
• LibSafe