SQL Injection Attacks Represent Two-Third of All Web App Attacks
For its "State of the Internet" report, Akamai analyzed data gathered from users of its Web application firewall technology between November 2017 and March 2019. The exercise shows that SQL injection (SQLi) now represents nearly two-thirds (65.1%) of all Web application attacks. That's up sharply from the 44% of Web application layer attacks that SQLi represented just two years ago.
Local File Inclusion (LFI) attacks, which, like SQLi, are also enabled by a Web application's failure to properly validate user input, accounted for another 24.7% of attacks. Together, SQLi and LFI attacks represented 89.8% of all attacks at the Web application layer over the 17-month period of Akamai's study.
[...] SQL injection errors and cross-site scripting (XSS) errors have topped, or nearly topped, the Open Web Application Security Project's (OWASP) list of top 10 Web vulnerabilities for more than a decade. Just this week, in fact, HackerOne published a report showing XSS errors to be by far the most common security vulnerability in Web apps across organizations. Both XSS and SQLi are well understood, and many researchers have catalogued the dangers associated with them for years.
The fact that so many Web apps still have them reflects the relatively scant attention paid to security in the application development stage, says Andy Ellis, chief security officer at Akamai. "It is not that the developers are making errors," he says. "It is system that we put them into that is dangerous."
[...] Akamai's data[pdf] shows most Web application attacks originate from inside the US and most targets are US-based as well. Of the nearly 4 billion application-layer attacks that Akamai counted over the 17-month period, some 2.7 billion targeted US organizations. Companies in the UK, Germany, Brazil, and India were also relatively heavily targeted. though nowhere nearly as much as US companies.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 15 2019, @05:20PM
Q: Don't frameworks solve SQLi infections?
A: Sometimes. If the framework cuts corners or doesn't properly sanitize input, then every application or website using that framework is vulnerable. If an add-on vendor doesn't adhere to the framework guidelines, or bypasses some functionality to be closer to the metal (where both you and I live), that can introduce vulnerabilities as well.
Frameworks are not a silver bullet. Security is always as weak as the weakest link.