I previously reported about my joy with MySQL-Proxy and a simple SQL-Injection detection based on a simple heuristic.

Today I present the more interesting approach that I promised to publish after my webinar yesterday. This approach is based on the idea that SQL queries issued by an application always have a certain structure. This structure can be learned and remembered by MySQL-Proxy. Any SQL query that has a different structure can then be considered an attack.

Training Mode

The first Lua script learn_sql_queries.lua uses MySQL-Proxy’s read_query hook to catch COM_INIT_DB and COM_QUERY packets. COM_INIT_DB packets are issued when the database is …

Josh Berkus' "Safe Data is Happy Data" (originally entitled "Lock Up Your Data") goes talks about defense in depth -- going beyond firewalls and other "perimeter defense" mechanisms such as middleware and web server tools. Berkus explains "full-stack security" including preventing SQL injection, data abstraction, database permissions, and even what to do after an attack.

Stream directly online at http://technocation.org/node/591/play or download the 346 Mb .wmv file at .

From the official OSCon description:

read more

“MySQL Proxy is a simple program that sits between your client and MySQL server(s) that can monitor, analyze or transform their communication. Its flexibility allows for unlimited uses; common ones include: load balancing; failover; query analysis; query filtering and modification; and many more.”

The flexibility of MySQL Proxy is based on the fact that every aspect is scriptable with Lua. Because I am new to MySQL Proxy and the Lua language I tried to implement a very simple script that waits for incoming SQL queries, tokenizes them and tries to detect SQL Injection heuristically by searching for certain disallowed SQL functions, databases, tables, statements or comments. When an SQL query is believed to contain an SQL injection is it not executed and a “Possible SQL …

At the 2008 MySQL User Conference and Expo, Brian Miezejewski gave a workshop on "Securing MySQL for a Security Audit".

I have already blogged about this keynote at http://www.pythian.com/blogs/948/liveblogging-who-is-the-dick-on-my-site.

If you are interested in actually seeing the video, the 286 Mb .wmv file can be downloaded at http://technocation.org/videos/original/mysqlconf2008/2008_04_17_panelDick.wmv and played through your browser by clicking the "play" link here. This is not to be missed!

Here are the slides and links I am using for the “Database Security Using White-Hat Google Hacking” at the 2008 MySQL Users Conference and Expo.

pdf slides

Where to Start:
http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/ghdb.php

i-hacked.com/content/view/23/42

for the impatient

Google’s Terms of Service
Google Operators

More Googlehacks to run:
Page 35 of …

Eli White from Digg presented. It was an interesting talk… He covered:

You are going to get hacked…
- SQL injection
- XSS
- CSRF (cross site request forgery)
- Session Hijacking

Slides (PDF, ODP) have SQL injection/XSS example, with the hole, the attack, and the prevention.

Technorati Tags: mysqlconf, mysql, mysqluc08, mysqluc2008, eli white, …

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Description:

This variable determines how many interrupted connections can occur from a host. If the number of interrupted connections from this host surpasses this number, that host is blocked from further connections. All of the …

The answers to the last pop quiz are up: http://www.pythian.com/blogs/868/pop-quiz-mysql-cluster

So here’s another pop quiz. Given the following:

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 16450949 to server version: 4.1.14-standard-log

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> select count(*),length(password) from mysql.user group by length(password);
+----------+------------------+
| count(*) | length(password) |
+----------+------------------+
|       49 |               16 |
|       31 |               41 |
+----------+------------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select password('foo');
+-------------------------------------------+
| password('foo')                           |
+-------------------------------------------+
| *F3A2A51A9B0F2BE2468926B4132313728C250DBF | …

I was asked this question recently, and I thought it was a great little tidbit of knowledge to pass along. The short answer is “no”. The slightly longer answer was written up by Jan Kneschke when dealing with a forum post about proxy + connection pooling.

From http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?146,169265,169700

The clear-text password is _never_ transfered in the authentication phase.

On the network we have:
* client connects to server (no data)
* server sends a seed (40 char, one-time, random)
* client sends 40 char hash of (seed + PASSWORD(clear-text-password))
* server compares against the hash(seed + SELECT password FROM mysql.user WHERE username = )

That way we never have the password as clear-text on the wire. (only in SET PASSWORD or GRANT statements).