What Are Good Ways to Prevent SQL Injection

What are good ways to prevent SQL injection?

By using the SqlCommand and its child collection of parameters all the pain of checking for sql injection is taken away from you and will be handled by these classes.

Here is an example, taken from one of the articles above:

private static void UpdateDemographics(Int32 customerID,
string demoXml, string connectionString)
{
// Update the demographics for a store, which is stored
// in an xml column.
string commandText = "UPDATE Sales.Store SET Demographics = @demographics "
+ "WHERE CustomerID = @ID;";

using (SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString))
{
SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand(commandText, connection);
command.Parameters.Add("@ID", SqlDbType.Int);
command.Parameters["@ID"].Value = customerID;

// Use AddWithValue to assign Demographics.
// SQL Server will implicitly convert strings into XML.
command.Parameters.AddWithValue("@demographics", demoXml);

try
{
connection.Open();
Int32 rowsAffected = command.ExecuteNonQuery();
Console.WriteLine("RowsAffected: {0}", rowsAffected);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}
}
}

what is the best way to prevent sql injection in mysql

Typically the best way is to rely on the library of the language you're writing in. Every good library has a way to write canned parameterized SQL statements, so just Google "$(language_name) parameterized SQL" and you'll be good to go.

How can I prevent SQL injection in PHP?

The correct way to avoid SQL injection attacks, no matter which database you use, is to separate the data from SQL, so that data stays data and will never be interpreted as commands by the SQL parser. It is possible to create an SQL statement with correctly formatted data parts, but if you don't fully understand the details, you should always use prepared statements and parameterized queries. These are SQL statements that are sent to and parsed by the database server separately from any parameters. This way it is impossible for an attacker to inject malicious SQL.

You basically have two options to achieve this:

  1. Using PDO (for any supported database driver):

    $stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM employees WHERE name = :name');
    $stmt->execute([ 'name' => $name ]);

    foreach ($stmt as $row) {
    // Do something with $row
    }
  2. Using MySQLi (for MySQL):

    $stmt = $dbConnection->prepare('SELECT * FROM employees WHERE name = ?');
    $stmt->bind_param('s', $name); // 's' specifies the variable type => 'string'
    $stmt->execute();

    $result = $stmt->get_result();
    while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    // Do something with $row
    }

If you're connecting to a database other than MySQL, there is a driver-specific second option that you can refer to (for example, pg_prepare() and pg_execute() for PostgreSQL). PDO is the universal option.



Correctly setting up the connection

PDO

Note that when using PDO to access a MySQL database real prepared statements are not used by default. To fix this you have to disable the emulation of prepared statements. An example of creating a connection using PDO is:

$dbConnection = new PDO('mysql:dbname=dbtest;host=127.0.0.1;charset=utf8mb4', 'user', 'password');

$dbConnection->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES, false);
$dbConnection->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);

In the above example, the error mode isn't strictly necessary, but it is advised to add it. This way PDO will inform you of all MySQL errors by means of throwing the PDOException.

What is mandatory, however, is the first setAttribute() line, which tells PDO to disable emulated prepared statements and use real prepared statements. This makes sure the statement and the values aren't parsed by PHP before sending it to the MySQL server (giving a possible attacker no chance to inject malicious SQL).

Although you can set the charset in the options of the constructor, it's important to note that 'older' versions of PHP (before 5.3.6) silently ignored the charset parameter in the DSN.

Mysqli

For mysqli we have to follow the same routine:

mysqli_report(MYSQLI_REPORT_ERROR | MYSQLI_REPORT_STRICT); // error reporting
$dbConnection = new mysqli('127.0.0.1', 'username', 'password', 'test');
$dbConnection->set_charset('utf8mb4'); // charset


Explanation

The SQL statement you pass to prepare is parsed and compiled by the database server. By specifying parameters (either a ? or a named parameter like :name in the example above) you tell the database engine where you want to filter on. Then when you call execute, the prepared statement is combined with the parameter values you specify.

The important thing here is that the parameter values are combined with the compiled statement, not an SQL string. SQL injection works by tricking the script into including malicious strings when it creates SQL to send to the database. So by sending the actual SQL separately from the parameters, you limit the risk of ending up with something you didn't intend.

Any parameters you send when using a prepared statement will just be treated as strings (although the database engine may do some optimization so parameters may end up as numbers too, of course). In the example above, if the $name variable contains 'Sarah'; DELETE FROM employees the result would simply be a search for the string "'Sarah'; DELETE FROM employees", and you will not end up with an empty table.

Another benefit of using prepared statements is that if you execute the same statement many times in the same session it will only be parsed and compiled once, giving you some speed gains.

Oh, and since you asked about how to do it for an insert, here's an example (using PDO):

$preparedStatement = $db->prepare('INSERT INTO table (column) VALUES (:column)');

$preparedStatement->execute([ 'column' => $unsafeValue ]);


Can prepared statements be used for dynamic queries?

While you can still use prepared statements for the query parameters, the structure of the dynamic query itself cannot be parametrized and certain query features cannot be parametrized.

For these specific scenarios, the best thing to do is use a whitelist filter that restricts the possible values.

// Value whitelist
// $dir can only be 'DESC', otherwise it will be 'ASC'
if (empty($dir) || $dir !== 'DESC') {
$dir = 'ASC';
}

Is this correct way to prevent SQL injection?

In your example, I see that you are using Wordpress functions so going that route you should consult the documentation for what you are doing, specifically prepare()
https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/classes/wpdb/prepare/

Which states "Prepares a SQL query for safe execution..."

So essentially yes you are protecting your query albeit by trusting that Wordpress is doing it correctly internally.

Best way to prevent sql injection when using column as variable

Transact-SQL has a function to turn a SQL string into a safe object name: QUOTENAME(). Use it around a bind parameter to have the database driver provide a properly quoted SQL object:

cursor.execute('SELECT QUOTENAME(%s)', (columnname,))
quoted_columnname, = next(cursor)

Now you can use that string in a new query:

query = 'ALTER TABLE tablenameA ADD {} varchar(25) NULL'.format(quoted_columnname)

etc. I used str.format() to insert the string here, rather than use string concatenation. Note that the [...] square brackets are no longer needed; QUOTENAME() took care of that.

Preventing SQL injection without prepared statements/SQLite/C++

Basically, the only thing you need to worry about here is the single quotes. Anything contained within single quotes in your query will be fine, but a lone single quote can end the string, allowing the rest of the data entry to run as code. If sqlPrintf doubles up single quotes, you should be fine. And reading the comments on your question, it sounds like this system works against the "';--" attack. :)



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