In a man-in-the-middle attack (MITM), a black hat hacker takes a position between two victims who are communicating with one another. In this spot, the attacker relays all communication, can listen to it, and even modify it. Imagine that Alice and Barbara talk to one…
GIF Buffer Content Exposed by Facebook Messenger
The saying one man’s trash is another man’s treasure applies to IT security as well. There are several types of attacks, such as buffer overflow, that rely on accessing leftover memory content. For example, this is exactly what the infamous Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL was…
What is Local File Inclusion (LFI)?
An attacker can use Local File Inclusion (LFI) to trick the web application into exposing or running files on the web server. An LFI attack may lead to information disclosure, remote code execution, or even Cross-site Scripting (XSS). Typically, LFI occurs when an application uses…
How to Configure Acunetix with Kenna Security
You can integrate Acunetix with Kenna Security as a connector, out of the box. The following configuration applies to both the Kenna VM appliance and the SaaS solution. First, create a new Kenna instance. On the Home page, you can see statistics for imported vulnerability…
DAST vs SAST: A Case for Dynamic Application Security Testing
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) is a black-box security testing methodology in which an application is tested from the outside. A tester using DAST examines an application when it is running and tries to hack it just like an attacker would. On the other end…
Remote Code Execution Possible in Drupal
On February 19, Drupal released a security advisory PSA-2019-02-19 (further amended by PSA-2019-02-22). The advisory contains information about a critical security flaw in Drupal 8.5 and 8.6 core. This flaw, classified as CVE-2019-6340, can be used for remote code execution (code injection). An exploit for…
DOM XSS: An Explanation of DOM-based Cross-site Scripting
DOM XSS stands for Document Object Model-based Cross-site Scripting. A DOM-based XSS attack is possible if the web application writes data to the Document Object Model without proper sanitization. The attacker can manipulate this data to include XSS content on the web page, for example,…
New build checks for Drupal RCE, ThinkPHP RCE, vBulletin LFI and Typo3 Restler LFI
Acunetix version 12 (build 12.0.190227132 – Windows and Linux) has been released. This new build includes a good number of new vulnerability checks, including checks for the recently discovered Drupal Remote Code Execution vulnerability, another RCE in ThinkPHP, Local File Inclusion vulnerabilities in vBulletin and…
Exploiting SQL Injection: a Hands-on Example
In this series, we will be showing step-by-step examples of common attacks. We will start off with a basic SQL Injection attack directed at a web application and leading to privilege escalation to OS root. SQL Injection is one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities a…