MySQL.com compromised by SQL injection attack

MySQL.com has been hacked and a part of the database containing member and employee email addresses, usernames and passwords has been published by the hackers on Pastebin.com.

The compromise has garnered quite an interest from the security community for two simple reasons.

For one, it seems that MySQL.com (and MySQL.fr, MySQL.de and MySQL.it) servers have been targeted with a blind SQL injection attack by two hackers that go by “TinKode” and “Ne0h”. According to Techie Buzz, it is possible that an XSS vulnerability affecting MySQL.com – discovered and submitted by TinKode back in January – has also been used in the attack.

Details of the blind SQL injection vulnerability have been revealed in an email sent to the Full-Disclosure mailing list.

Secondly, the login credentials revealed in the published part of the database have demonstrated that MySQL employees are not big fans of strong passwords. For example, Robin Schumacher, MySQL’s Director of Product Management, uses a simple four digit password for WordPress. A number of other accounts have “qa” as a password.

Sun, MySQL’s parent company, has also been attacked by the same hackers. The targeted websites are www.reman.sun.com and www.ibb.sun.com, and they also proved to be vulnerable to a SQL injection attack. Whether they exploited the same vulnerability that compromised MySQL.com, they didn’t say. The hackers again published some of the gathered information, but this time they didn’t make login credentials public.