Lateral SQL Injection in Oracle Database

Overview
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In order to get the system date in Oracle, you able to query for sysdate field in table dual.
SQL> select sysdate from dual;
SYSDATE
————–
15-SEP-11

SYSDATE format is set in: nls_date_format.

Following the publication: Lateral SQL Injection: A New Class of Vulnerability in Oracle, (http://www.databasesecurity.com/dbsec/lateral-sql-injection.pdf) published by David Litchfield, FEB/2008.

This post provides an overview and a demonstration on how this issue is still easily exploitable in Oracle Database.

Vulnerability
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Nls_date_format allows input of any string without filtering.
Example:  alter session set nls_date_format = ‘”the time is:”… hh24:mi’

After running that command, the SYSDATE will …