While SQL-Injection is one of the most discussed security problems in web applications other possible problems for SQL queries like overlong input are usually ignored although they can lead to all kinds of security problems.

This might be caused by the fact that security problems that are the result of overlong input are often buffer overflows and buffer overflows are something many web application security experts know nothing about and choose to ignore.

There are however several security problems for SQL queries that are caused by overlong input and no one talks about.

max_packet_size

In MySQL there exists a configuration option called max_packet_size which is set to one megabyte by default and controls the maximum size of a packet sent between the SQL client and server. When queries or result rows do not fit into a single packet a error is raised. This means an overlong SQL query is never sent to the server …

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 …

At NetCAT

During NetCAT, I got a chance to review PHP support, although I had opted for it before-hand, still I just got started last week.

You can read my 4th edition of personal NetCAT Weekly Report. So, Tony and Yudi, reviewed it in early days of NetCAT 6.5, while I was reviewing VW JSF tutorials.

Kickstarter- WordPress Tutorial

Now, some of them are working, though I gave my personal opinions, what I felt after reviewing. By the way, it was Jan Chalupa’s WordPress Project Tutorial, that got me started finally to review PHP docs and editor support, etc.

Tomorrow, Thursday the 15th, I'm driving down to Atlanta to give a presentation on Join-fu: The Art of SQL at the Atlanta PHP User Group. If you're interested in how to squeeze the most performance out of your (My)SQL applications, some "join" me. We'll be covering a number of topics, including a brief overview of MySQL internals, optimizing schema and index organization, understanding the many MySQL storage engines, and most of all, how to think in SQL and not in your programming language of choice.

Why is it important to think in terms of SQL and not your programming language of choice when implementing database-centric applications? Well, the short answer is that SQL is a set-based …

Today marks a big day in the history of the Malaysian Government - they’ve released their first fully open source software package, MyMeeting.

Poking around their Trac installation, they use PHP and MySQL 5 (5.0.51a from Ubuntu, even!). Of course their install documentation suggests a lot of Windows usage, but this is a step in the right direction.

Give it a twirl. Report bugs. How many more governments out there are writing and releasing open source software packages? Or is this a first?

“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 …

I just got informed that two of my session proposals for DrupalCon 2008 got accepted - I will be speaking about the following topics there:

• MySQL Backup and Security - Best practices
• High availability solutions for MySQL: An Overview and practical demo

The second talk will be held in cooperation with Jakub Suchy, who will take over the practical demo. Sun Microsystems is a Gold …

What a week!

First off, here are the slides from my talk “CouchDB at 10,000ft”. Thanks to everyone who showed up and a double thanks for the eight of you who rated my session so far. More special props to the ones with constructive criticism. I’ll do better next time. If you haven’t already, place your vote.

Ted has some nice pictures of my talk and the discussion afterwards. The feedback I got was great and people do really want to use CouchDB. This is great encouragement for putting in some after-work hours to push things towards 1.0.

But OSCON.

What a week!

First off, here are the slides from my talk “CouchDB at 10,000ft”. Thanks to everyone who showed up and a double thanks for the eight of you who rated my session so far. More special props to the ones with constructive criticism. I’ll do better next time. If you haven’t already, place your vote.

Ted has some nice pictures of my talk and the discussion afterwards. The feedback I got was great and people do really want to use CouchDB. This is great encouragement for putting in some after-work hours to push things towards 1.0.

But OSCON.

What a week!

First off, here are the slides from my talk “CouchDB at 10,000ft”. Thanks to everyone who showed up and a double thanks for the eight of you who rated my session so far. More special props to the ones with constructive criticism. I’ll do better next time. If you haven’t already, place your vote.

Ted has some nice pictures of my talk and the discussion afterwards. The feedback I got was great and people do really want to use CouchDB. This is great encouragement for putting in some after-work hours to push things towards 1.0.

But OSCON.