500,000 Microsoft-Powered Sites Hit With SQL Injection

A new SQL injection attack aimed at Microsoft IIS web servers has hit some 500,000 websites, including the United Nations, UK Government sites and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. While the attack is not Microsoft's fault, it is unique to the company's IIS server.

The automated attacked takes advantage to the fact that Microsoft's IIS servers allow generic commands that don't require a specific table level argument. However, the vulnerability is the result of poor data handling by the sites’ creators, rather than a specific Microsoft flaw.

In other words, there’s no patch that’s going to fix the issue, the problem is with the developers who failed follow well-established security practices for handling database input.

The attack itself injects some malicious JavaScript code into every text field in your database, the Javascript then loads an external script that can compromise a user’s PC.

Most of the larger sites affected have already long since repaired themselves and claim that the underlying problems in their code have been fixed. However, if you don’t want to take the chance there’s a simple way to avoid the problem — use Firefox with NoScript. Since the attack loads a script from a different domain, NoScript will stop it from running.

If your site has been affected you’re going to need to restore your database from a clean backup copy and start reviewing your code to make sure all input is properly sanitized, otherwise you’ll just get hit again. Should you not have a clean backup of you database hackademix.net has a workaround for rerunning the attack, but changing a couple lines to remove the injected JavaScript.

"A vulnerability in a network will allow a malicious user to exploit a host or an application. A vulnerability in a host will allow a malicious user to exploit a network or an application. A vulnerability in an application will allow a malicious user to exploit a network or a host."
— Carlos Lyons, Corporate Security, Microsoft