Module 2

Tools and Methods used in

Cybercrime
Learning 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
Stealingpersonal 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 )
 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.

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.
 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.

Random passwords
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.
 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.
 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
installinga 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, .DR
V) 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

Surfon 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