What We Love About Netsparker

Netsparker Professional Edition, by Mavituna Security, is a web application scanner focused on finding unknown flaws in your applications. It can find a wide range of vulnerabilities including SQL injection, cross-site scripting, local and remote file inclusion, command injection and more.

Installation of the software was easy, and as Mavituna Security touts, the license is non-obtrusive. Starting the application you are presented with a nice well designed gui, that shows quite a lot of information. To start a scan, it can be as simple as just putting in a URL. It is very easy for non-security professionals to setup and use. There are also profiles you can configure and save. It’s possible to configure a form login through a very well designed wizard.

The main draw of Netsparker is the confirmation engine, which is how Netsparker claims to be false positive free. The confirmation engine takes the vulnerability and actually confirms that it’s exploitable. If it’s exploitable, it’s definitely not a false positive. A neat feature of identified SQL injection vulnerabilities is the ability for Netsparker to allow you to exploit them right through the scanner. You can run SQL queries, or even open a shell (depending on DB and configuration of it). Directory traversal vulnerabilities can be exploited to download the whole source of the application since Netsparker already knows all the files, and other system files can also be retrieved and saved through the interface.

We set Netsparker to scan our Web application lab which contains known vulnerabilities that cover the OWASP Top Ten Project. We noticed that Netsparker did a very good job at spidering and finding a high number of attack surfaces. On vulnerabilities, Netsparker did a great job of finding SQL injections, cross site scripting, and directory traversals. On one vulnerability, I thought I may have made Netsparker report a confirmed false positive, but it turns out I was wrong after I used the built in query maker and ran one and got data back.

Overall I think Netsparker is an excellent tool, especially effective at finding SQL injections and cross-site issues. Of course, I wouldn’t say it was the only scanner you should have, but definitely consider adding it to your repertoire.

Web App Security

Over the past few days more than 30 exploits have been released focusing on web applications. The exploits focus on SQL injection attacks, which are a major vulnerability lately, and that’s just for published web applications. Many more are being discovered in privately developed websites. It still seems that some developers out there are still not embracing secure coding practices.

Bot activity has still been seen spreading through websites also using these vulnerabilities. Causing normally trustable websites to deliver malware to unsuspecting users. Until all developers change their coding processes, we can expect these exploits and bot activity to keep increasing. In the mean time, we recommend that any applications you are developing undergo testing, and any web applications (such as CMS) you are using stay patched.

Critical Oracle Vulnerabilities

Multiple vulnerabilities have been reported in the Oracle products listed below. The packages SDO_GEOM, SDO_IDX, and SDO_UTIL do not properly sanitize input, this can allow the injection of arbitrary SQL code. Additionally there are issues with the DBMS_STATS_INTERNAL package. These issues could allow an attacker to gain DBA privileges. There are additional issues that remain unspecified. See Oracle’s original advisory at: http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/critical-patch-updates/cpuapr2008.html

* Oracle Database 11g, version 11.1.0.6
* Oracle Database 10g Release 2, versions 10.2.0.2, 10.2.0.3
* Oracle Database 10g, version 10.1.0.5
* Oracle Database 9i Release 2, versions 9.2.0.8, 9.2.0.8DV
* Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3), versions 10.1.3.1.0, 10.1.3.3.0
* Oracle Application Server 10g Release 2 (10.1.2), versions 10.1.2.0.2, 10.1.2.1.0, 10.1.2.2.0
* Oracle Application Server 10g (9.0.4), version 9.0.4.3
* Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g, version 10.1.2
* Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, version 12.0.4
* Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i, version 11.5.10.2
* Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise PeopleTools versions 8.22.19, 8.48.16, 8.49.09
* Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise HCM versions 8.8 SP1, 8.9, 9.0
* Oracle Siebel SimBuilder versions 7.8.2, 7.8.5