What Is SQL Injection? SQL Injection (SQLi) is a type of injection attack targeting a backend relational database. An attacker can use it to make a web application process and execute injected SQL statements as part of an existing SQL query. This article assumes that…
Out-of-band XML External Entity (OOB-XXE)
As with many types of attacks, you can divide XML External Entity attacks (XXE attacks) into two types: in-band and out-of-band. In-band XXE attacks are more common and let the attacker receive an immediate response to the XXE payload. In the case of out-of-band XXE…
What Are XML External Entity (XXE) Attacks
An XML External Entity (XXE) attack (sometimes called an XXE injection attack) is a type of attack that abuses a widely available but rarely used feature of XML parsers. Using XXE, an attacker is able to cause Denial of Service (DoS) as well as access…
How do I check that Acunetix crawled through the entire site?
When using Acunetix to scan for vulnerabilities, it is imperative that all locations are discoverable by DeepScan, as missing even one path will leave your application vulnerable to a potential attack. To check if Acunetix identified all the locations in your application, navigate to Scans…
Nicholas Sciberras on Hack Naked News
Acunetix CTO, Nicholas Sciberras, joins Paul at Hack Naked News to discuss a recent security incident which saw white hat hackers flooding VKontakte (VK) with spam on Valentine’s Day. This was part of a revenge prank against the Russian social network after the company failed…
All about Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
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…
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…