SQL Injection Turns BusinessWeek Into Viral Replicator

martins writes "The website of popular magazine BusinessWeek has been attacked via SQL injection in an attempt to infect its readership with malware. Hundreds of pages in a section of BusinessWeek's website which offers information about where MBA students might find future employers have been affected."

Comments

Malic or incompetence?

[Scutter]

Sophos informed BusinessWeek of the infection last week, although at the time of writing the hackers' scripts are still present and active on their site.

It's bad enough to have an insecure site, but to ignore the break-in for a week or more is just unconscionable.

Re:Malic or incompetence?

[JCSoRocks]

I never understood how SQL injection happened on major sites until it happened to someone I know. (wow that sounded like a bad plug for some unknown disease... anyway...) Initially he absolutely refused to believe that it was SQL injection because, "His application wasn't vulnerable to that!". Finally, in the face of overwhelming truth it dawned on him that it was... so what happened? Oh, the database got cleaned up from a back up... but no code was changed. Then they did it again a short while later and he caught a clue and fixed it up. So, sadly... I've seen people do the same thing - it happens.

Re:Malic or incompetence?

[b4dc0d3r]

It's a site for MBAs - they were waiting for the "technical guys" to fix it. First techie to raise the issue gets fired as a scapegoat, second one has to fix it.

Re:Malic or incompetence?

[ednopantz]

They just don't teach anything about security in schools. We interviewed an intern candidate this spring and asked her how one would avoid a SQL injection attack.

Her response: "Don't use Microsoft products."

Swing and a miss!

The candidate's sample code had a big 'ol SQL injection vulnerability. Yet the instructor raved over his project.

Re:Malic or incompetence?

[El_Oscuro]

In one important way, she is right:

SQL Server allows multiple commands to be parsed and executed on a single call, separated by a semicolon. Thus something like Robert''; drop table students; -- works

Oracle (while it has plenty of security vulnerabilities of its own), only allows one command to be executed. So if it is a query, a query is all you can do. True, if the developer is really stupid, you can do things like query DBA_USERS, but you are not going to be able to insert virus code or drop tables.

If I were Microsoft, the next release of SQL Server would have a parameter (turned on by default) which disabled multiple command parsing.

Hmm

[LizardKing]

It really is fscked. Every job advert is for Lehmans.

Re:Hmm

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Hundreds of pages in a section of BusinessWeek's website which offers information about where MBA students might find future employers have been affected."

So no great loss to society then.

Pity on the future MBAs

[rainer_d]

Ah-well, only kidding ;)

That's frightening

[Centurix]

A replicant virus. Is it a virus or a replicant? Will it need retiring? If the website hosted a picture of a turtle on its back, will it rotate the picture 180 degrees? Will we know if it's a replicant virus or a real virus by the end of the article?

ATTENTION WEB DEVELOPERS

[Anonymous Coward]

HAI!

Just a friendly reminder - your Database Admin will be more than happy to set up multiple users for you with different permissions. For instance, a user with "write" privileges that can be used by the website backend page that the editors use, and a user with "read only" permissions that the public facing web server(s) will use when presenting the page to the public.

That is all.

Re:ATTENTION WEB DEVELOPERS

[apathy maybe]

This is a very good point. Except that phpMyAdmin makes it really easy to set up a new database with a single user who has all rights, and the same name as the DB.

So what I tend to do (and I do admit that I am a lazy SOB), is just create a new DB and user for every app.

However, your idea is much better, and it would be nice if phpMyAdmin had such a feature... (Not that I'm about to code it in, on account of my being busy with other things, and never having even looked at the phpMyAdmin code beyond what is needed to install it.)

However, an even better thing to do (then just create a read-only user), is to escape shit before you query the DB... PHP and MySQL have this nifty function mysql_real_escape_string which will do that for you. It is better then using the general escape functions in PHP, for reasons that I read just recently. Basically, it takes into account the character encoding for the DB... http://shiflett.org/blog/2006/jan/addslashes-versus-mysql-real-escape-string

Re:ATTENTION WEB DEVELOPERS

[Anonymous Coward]

Multiple DB users, proper escaping, you know it's not actually an either-or situation. If the only way you know to set up a database is through phpMyAdmin, then you need help reading the manual.

Re:ATTENTION WEB DEVELOPERS

[morgan_greywolf]

However, your idea is much better, and it would be nice if phpMyAdmin had such a feature

Um, it does. Click on 'Privileges' and then 'Add a new user'. You're looking for 'database-specific priveleges.'

Re:ATTENTION WEB DEVELOPERS

[Shados]

The fact that "mysql_real_escape_string" or whatever exists is an example of that: String escaping relies on string manipulation tricks to make things "secure". On top of being potentially vulnerable to any problem in the server (which obviously cannot be gotten around of), it is also vulnerable to anything on the language side: for example, a string vulnerability would also make your queries vulnerable. Two attack vectors.

Its a workaround, a cheat, a hack. A prepared statement is handled by the driver and/or by the server itself, to compile your statement, and then pass the parameters (like you would a stored procedure or a function) at the binary level, on a RDBMS by RDBMS basis... That is, the vulnerabilities at the string level of MySQL are not the same as Postgres which are not the same as Oracle, DB2, or SQLServer, etc.

On top of that, prepared statements will (in most RBDMS) compile and cache the statement, and be able to reuse it whenever is needed (basically, whenever the query is the same except for the parameters), which enhance performance.

So there's simply no reason to use string escaping, and hasn't been ages.

Re:ATTENTION WEB DEVELOPERS

[Shados]

VBA can have paramterized query. The old ADO supports them just fine...

Bobby Tables is at it again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bobby Tables is at it again...

Re:MBA students, appropriate.

[jellomizer]

You haven't seen the modern MBA have you. Almost half of the MBA students have Computer Science Degrees and have been working professional for at least 5 years. Many of them while good at what they do, wants to further their career so go for an MBA so they be considered qualified for promotion. Not every one wants to be a basic programmer for the rest of their life, they much rather have influence in the process and the design and less time doing the drudge work.

' UNION UPDATE `users` SET karma='godlike';--

[nathan.fulton]

TFA: "the code injected into BusinessWeek's website points to a Russian website that is currently down and not delivering further malicious code."

Seriously? Why is it that these people always point to their site? wouldn't you figure that, with a bit of injection, they could put the damn thing in the database? It's never made any sense to me. Anyone have any insights?

Also, they always waste these opportunities to give replace real headlines with those from the Onion... if they're going to do something malicious, they should at least do it with style...

Re:' UNION UPDATE `users` SET karma='godlike';--

[NoisySplatter]

If you're going to do something malicious for profit you should make it look like nothing ever happened. While swapping the headlines would be funny it would definitely lessen the amount of time the flaw went unnoticed.

Re:' UNION UPDATE `users` SET karma='godlike';--

[10101001 10101001]

Seriously? Why is it that these people always point to their site? wouldn't you figure that, with a bit of injection, they could put the damn thing in the database? It's never made any sense to me. Anyone have any insights?

1. Inject a database to gain access
2. Insert barebones code to bootstrap from an updateable external source
3. Patch the database so no one else can remotely take over your newly pwned database

In short, it's because the people who do this want to make money and insure that they can update the malicious code as needbe without worrying that someone else will come along and tie down the system with their own crap. Now, if said people knew when the site was going to be cleaned and had all the necessary code already created for that circumstance, I'm sure they'd do a one-time injection without any external references. But, if so few coders in the legit market can manage it and almost all need the ability to patch code months or years in the future, I'm pretty sure most black market scammers are going to be in the same boat.

And like the other poster pointed out, the point isn't to draw attention. That just increases the odds of decreasing the money making period. Not to mention that questionable headlines might make people shy away from the site under realization that it's hacked.

more economic woes

[prgrmr]

Hundreds of pages in a section of BusinessWeek's website which offers information about where MBA students might find future employers have been affected

I suppose McDonald's is going to have to rely on employing just the liberal arts majors for now.

Re:more economic woes

[flyingfsck]

You made me snort my coffee... but it is so true. The other problem is that MBAs are very unlikely to know how to fix their machines once they are fscked up. In every place I worked, most viruses were spread by the top brass.

Re:MBA students, appropriate.

[SQLGuru]

Many of them while good at what they do

Not every one wants to be a basic programmer for the rest of their life

Pretty much all of the *GOOD* programmers *DO* want to program for the rest of their lives (while I wouldn't say "basic programmer"....most want to be Dev Lead / Architect type of coders, but coders none the less). And being Dev Lead / Architect is not the type of position that goes to the MBA grads.....MBAs are for people who want to go into Management / Project Management.

I've been in the industry since 1994 and am one of the top database developers in my company. And I don't see myself as being a manager any time soon. I enjoy programming too much. [This is in a large corporation where a manager is not a technical manager; small companies where "Dev Lead" equates to manager might be a different situation.]

Layne

Re:Bobby Tables is at it again (obligatory link)

[CaraCalla]

http://xkcd.com/327/

Nit pick time.

[BitterOldGUy]

Many of them while good at what they do, wants to further their career so go for an MBA so they be considered qualified for promotion.

To nitpick:

That depends on your company and their policies. Therefore ask HR. I did once to see what they'd do for me. The answer was that I'd get a $3,000 raise for having a graduate degree. I asked for clarification regarding why she put that way; "You mean, I would get the raise regardless of what masters degree I received?"

"Yes. Of course your manager has to approve it."

Another thing to clarify, and I've found this out the hard expensive way: getting an MBA does NOT automatically give you a ticket into management. Here's what I was told by several folks: You need management experience for an MBA to mean something. Without the experience, the MBA is worthless. So now, I'm a coder with an MBA - it's not doing me any good. And like a stupid SOB, I paid for it with student loans. I did it when I was out of work thinking that it would get me a management job. Schools are so quick to tell you that their MBA will further your career. BS! Experience matters more than the degree - and networking (i.e. It's who you know.)

So here's what I would do differently, get into management, see if my company requires an MBA for my position, get them to pay for it, bust my ass in night school, some profit! But if they don't require it, I don't see the point in getting one.

And there's going to be a HUGE glut of MBAs. With this down economy, MBA enrollments have gone through the roof. Which means, in two years, the already huge glut of MBAs is going to get bigger.

Re:Nit pick time.

[nomadic]

So now, I'm a coder with an MBA - it's not doing me any good. And like a stupid SOB, I paid for it with student loans.

Look on the bright side; it was only 2 years of student loans, I had to do 3 years of law school to be in the same situation.

Re:Nit pick time.

[nomadic]

I did 4 years of CS only to spend most of 4th year playing CS, mudding and having a long distance relationship with someone in a different timezone

Wow, you were in CS but had a relationship? You're already beating the curve there.

Re:MBA students, appropriate.

[retchdog]

No, I just have to spend time around them occasionally since my field happens to be very useful in finance and business. You can tell, because when you enter the business-popular classes (time series; baby stochastic analysis; &c.) the first thing that hits you is a wave of cheap cologne covering the stench of desperation.

AND I don't mean ...

[BitterOldGUy]

to disparage education. It's just that the days of getting more education to advance in your career, at least in corporate America, are gone. All you need are the basics; which usually is a BS in your field. It's who you know. And even then, if thy're snobs who don't associate with "your kind of people" it doesn't matter either. We're rapidly becoming a downwardly mobile society.

I'm just ... look at my user name...

Re:MBA students, appropriate.

[jellomizer]

To be a good Architect you often need a strong business knowledge. Yea Yea You know how to program you so smart (being that I learned to program at 6 years old) it doesn't take a genius to program. But in reality being able to be a good programmer doesn't mean you can design or create solutions that solve real business problems. I have been in the industry for a long time too. Working as a consulting I was actually the top database developer for multiple companies, including many fortune 500 companies. However I found that creating the code is a piece of cake, however the hard part is trying to understand the business process, then filtering out what is needed and not for the code to run successfully without having to run extra work, as well understand what is happening so in a case the software fails (or hardware) you can come up with a quick workaround solution for the employees until you can get a working version. Business knowledge is a key area. If you are working in a business environment getting Masters in computer science wouldn't be as useful as getting an MBA.

Re:MBA students, appropriate.

[David Gerard]

Depends. Alan Cox is a top-class programmer who got an MBA because there was this whole other world that intersected with what he did that he didn't understand.

Re:MBA students, appropriate.

[oh_bugger]

I've had knowledge of the business process since I was 4 and said knowledge has expanded massively over the years. I was programming using assembly language before I started school. I have created many well known software titles from nothing and many companies rely on these titles. I've cracked any encryption thrown at me and managed to recover files from a hard drive that had been zeroed out. I'm worth 124 billion dollars and Presidents have asked me for advice on many occasions (unfortunately not recently). I am capable of stopping time with my mind and I can fly. I have saved children from burning buildings and put wanted criminals into the buildings. I retired aged 12 but the whole world begged me to come out retirement as when my influence disappeared there economy started to tumble. I have been banned from the Olympic Games because I consistently would win every medal and spoil it for everyone else. There is a contract out on my life because I have invented a type of vehicle which actually reduces the carbon in the air and runs on love. The HLC actually malfunctioned the other day but I stopped the black hole from expanding with my bare hands. God once made a mistake and destroyed the world. He asked for my help in recreating the Earth and I did it in 20 minutes, not 6 days like him.

SQL Injection? At this hour?

[brian.aspx]

I can't believe in this day and age something as lame as sql injection is still happening, especially to large company websites. Anyone using inline SQL should be taken out back and ridiculed until they cry. If your developers are mindless enough not to validiate user input then at least use stored procedures.

Re:MBA students, appropriate.

[SQLGuru]

You sound like "The Most Interesting Man in the World": http://www.brentter.com/dos-equis-most-interesting-man/

Do you drink Dos Equis???

Layne

Re:MBA students, appropriate.

[Free the Cowards]

I'd be really curious to know what he thought of it afterwards, and whether having an MBA really helped him understand this other world. I get the distinct impression that an MBA is the business-world equivalent of an MSCE: it gives you some basic knowledge and impresses the clueless but isn't really very useful.

Re:MBA students, appropriate.

[broohaha]

Depends on the school and the student.

Half the engineers in my dept of this telecom equipment company I used to work for were getting their MBA's at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management or at the U of Chicago's Graduate School of Business.

They were all freakin' brilliant, but being a staff engineer wasn't all they wanted to be. They wanted to start their own companies or run one from a very high perch. I kept in touch with a few of them over the years, and sure enough, they all ended up doing those things. I even started a company with one of them.

So, again. It all depends on what you take out of it, as well as where you go and how seriously they treat you. If you walk in thinking it's a piece of cake and nothing more than a piece of paper to wave at people, then it'll be worth far less than others who take it seriously and use what they learned effectively. (Choose the right school, too, of course.)

Voodoo economics / creative accounting

[SgtChaireBourne]

Just a quick question: why, exactly, do MBAs need to know calculus?

Please, I'm not following.

"In the fall of 1972 President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection." http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/D/derivative.html

Re:MBA students, appropriate.

[EdelFactor19]

no to be a good architect you have to have DOMAIN knowledge, not business knowledge. You don't have to know how to turn a profit or what an ROI is. You have to have technical knowledge of the requirements and the varied means which you could possibly implement a solution with.

the masters in CS probably wouldnt be needed because these "business environments" you speak of never tend to do anything cutting edge in terms of the things that you do in getting a masters in CS; further research into Computer Science, not becoming a better programmer.

and for the love of god stop talking about writing databases like its "coding". A database developer is not a coder or a programmer. Someone who actually writes programs to interact with the database is.

It doesnt take a genious to write a hit song, or invent a brilliant product either, it takes ingenuity and creativity mixed with some experience. But your job isnt to be a "good programmer" its to be a good software engineer.
It doesnt take a genious to write Hello World; but it might take more of genious to realize he doesnt need to write hello world anymore, he can write a program to do it for him.

all in all you sound increasingly full of it.

lol "creating the code is a piece of cake"
sorta like typing a book is a piece of cake too, its figuring out what to right thats the challenge. And god forbid you knew anything about software development you'd be unit testing the software you wrote.

in short, if you want to be software architect knowing something about the field your software is in is just a bit more important than knowing about "business". Knowing the figures and profit margins and the financial business strategy not so important. Understand the technical domain of the software you are developing, how clients would use your software, and experience using and designing software in similar fields (especially using Go4 patterns) far more important.

thanks for demonstrating the pig headed naivety that you can always throw a couple more "business minded managers" at a problem to solve it.