Microsoft recommends free tools to address SQL attacks

Microsoft on Thursday issued a security advisory addressing the recent spike in SQL injection attacks impacting legitimate — but poorly coded — websites.

The advisory recommends administrators leverage any number of free tools that identify vulnerable ASP and ASP.NET web application code.

Among the recommended solutions: HP Scrawlr from Hewlett-Packard; Microsoft's UrlScan version 3.0 beta and a newly developed Microsoft source code analysis tool.

"These SQL injection attacks do not exploit a specific software vulnerability but instead target websites that do not follow secure coding practices for accessing and manipulating data stored in a relational database," Bill Sisk, security response communications manager at Microsoft, said Tuesday in an email.  "These free tools offer detection and defense, as well as identify possible code which may be exploited by an attacker."

For more information or to learn how to download the tools, see the advisory.

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