Injection attacks have been around a long time and are still one of the most dangerous forms of attack vectors used by cybercriminals. Injection attacks refer to when threat actors “inject” or provide a non-validated input to a program. This initial input gets processed as part of a command or query which in turn manipulates, changes or overrides the execution of a program. Injection attacks are known to cause data loss, data corruption, security breaches, leakage of information and loss of control. A ‘successful’ injection can empower adversaries with administrator privileges, allowing them to access or manipulate database information without authorization.
Considered a top web security risk, injection attacks usually aim at web applications. Although injection attacks come in a variety of flavors, certain attack types are more common than others. A 2022 study by Radware reported the most common types of injection attacks include predictable resource location, code injection and SQL injection attacks, while overall attacks on web applications grew by 128%.