A few weeks ago I ran across this project, called GreenSQL. It is an open source database firewall to help organizations mitigate application vulnerabilities due to common SQL attacks like SQL injection and such.

It is a list-based heuristic proxy firewall that you can use to filter SQL traffic between the web server and the database server. This is a pretty powerful tool, even being list-based. As this project evolves, perhaps it will also include more powerful approaches such as anomaly-based analysis.

For now though, black listing, white listing and their approach to transaction risk weighting is a very powerful approach and much better than nothing.

That said, MSI has has not tested the application or performed any formal review, we just liked the idea that they were working on. Perhaps, in the future we will donate some lab cycles to a review and some testing, but we wanted to help them at least get the word out about their project.

If you are using MySQL for your web-based applications, it might be a good thing to spend some time looking at this project and testing the capabilities of the tool for your environment. Eliminating SQL attacks from web-applications will reduce a significant amount of risk from their deployment. By some estimates, that risk could be as high as 25% of the aggregate risk an application causes. No matter the metrics, this project is certainly a step forward.