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It doesn’t get any more ironic than this. The Web site for Oracle’s open source database MySQL has been hacked…by a SQL injection attack.
Oracle’s MySQL.com customer Web site was compromised on March 27 by hackers who publicly posted usernames, database schemas and passwords obtained during the attack. The vulnerable domains included www.mysql.com, www.mysql.fr, www.mysql.de, www.mysql.it and www-jp.mysql.com.
The attack used was a blind SQL injection, which means that when a SQL injection attack is used on a Web application, the results are not readily visible to the attackers. The page with the vulnerability would not display the compromised data, but will display slightly differently based on the injected SQL code. Blind injections are generally time-intensive because a new statement must be crafted for each bit recovered, but there are a number of tools that can automate the attack.
The attackers e-mailed a list of all the internal databases and associated passwords (in hash) for mysql.com to the Full Disclosure mailing list. Rumanian hackers “TinKode” and “Ne0h,” took credit for the attack. Other hackers piled on, posting cracked passwords on Pastebin.
The vulnerability doesn’t appear to be in the MySQL software, but rather in the way the sites were implemented, according to Chester Wisnewski, a senior security advisor at Sophos.
There are appears to be plenty of problems with the MySQL Web site. A look at the latest reports on XSSed.com reveals that various MySQL domains have been reported as having cross-site-scripting flaws, the most recent one found in Jan. 4, by TinKode.
According to the published list, MySQL ran about 47 databases on an Apache Web Server, and attackers were able to see individual table and column names. The attackers also published the hashed passwords for administrative accounts like webmaster, wordpress, root and for forums.
Even though the passwords were in hash, anyone using publicly available rainbow tables can match dictionary-based words to the published hash values to crack any easy-to-guess login credentials. In fact, the hackers discovered that the former director of product management Robin Schumacher’s WordPress password was set to a four-digit number, according to Wisnewski. Several other accounts had simple passwords, such as “qa,” he wrote on the NakedSecurity blog.
Schumacher is now director of product strategy at EnterpriseDB.
Oracle acquired MySQL as part of its acquisition of Sun in April 2009.
The ironies keep coming. Sun.com was also hit by the same hackers, who managed to obtain database names, but no passwords, using a separate SQL injection attack.