Department of Defence and other investigators, are investigating two U.S. Army web server breaches which were never publicly disclosed.
On 19th September 2007, and 26th January 2008, a Turkish hacker group known as “m0sted” successfully probed 2 U.S. Army web servers, by running a SQL injection attack against the web servers, which exploited a security vulnerability in Microsoft’s SQL Server database.
As a result of such hacks, users trying to access Army Corps of Engineers’ servers or McAlesters Munitions plant website, were redirected to other sites, such as www.m0sted.net.
If these web applications were properly audited with a web vulnerability scanner which can easily identify a SQL injection vulnerability, such as Acunetix WVS, such incident could have been easily avoided. Proper user input sanitization is a MUST. Once a website is available online, the web server port is wide open and the only hope one has is that all visitors play fair. From the above, we can learn that if a website is vulnerable, a malicious user can easily gain access to the rest of the network.
Get the latest content on web security
in your inbox each week.
THE AUTHOR
