Via eWeek.

[snip]

On July 18, Sunbelt Software came across a SQL command passed as a query within 
a URL belonging to an arm of a European country's military. With that, any 
visitor can pass queries in the URL straight to the back-end database and 
squeeze out any data, no password required.

At the time, the URL displayed what Sunbelt President Alex Eckelberry calls an 
"infantile" security screw-up: Namely, putting production code and a back-end 
database into the hands of anybody who wanders by. It was, in other words, a 
serious security vulnerability that even the most basic security policy should 
have forbidden, never mind the security policy of a major defense agency.

Sunbelt, of Clearwater, Fla., alerted security researchers from the country in 
question. They in turn assured Sunbelt that they would notify the defense 
agency.

End of story? Unfortunately not. Six weeks later, Sunbelt checked the site and 
found it was still a sitting duck, serving up military base information to any 
visitor who knows how to frame a SQL query, telling potential attackers exactly 
which database it was running and what operating system it was using, thereby 
painting a day-glow arrow toward the exact class of known vulnerabilities and 
exploits that could bring it to its knees.

[snip]

More:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2180443,00.asp

- ferg


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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