LDAP Injection

What is LDAP:

LDAP is a protocol that facilitates the location of organizations, individuals and other resources in a network. It is a streamlined version of DAP (Directory Access Protocol), which is part of X.500, a standard for network directory services.

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) provides a mechanism for connecting to, searching, and modifying internet directories. LDAP statements (or Queries) used to retrieve data from information directories.

What is LDAP Injection:

LDAP injection is a specific form of attack that can be employed to compromise Web sites that construct LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) statements from data provided by users. This is done by changing LDAP statements so dynamic Web applications can run with invalid permissions, allowing the attacker to alter, add or delete content.

LDAP injection works in much the same manner as SQL injection, a type of security exploit in which the attacker adds SQL (Structured Query Language) code to a Web form input box to gain access to resources or make changes to data. According to security experts, the main reason that LDAP injection and similar exploits are on the rise is the fact that security is not sufficiently emphasized in application development. To protect the integrity of Web sites and applications, experts recommend the implementation of simple precautions during development, such as controlling the types and numbers of characters that are accepted by input boxes.

The most common way to detect the LDAP Injection attack is:

1. Identify entry points that collect user input such as text boxes, query string parameters, etc.
2. Insert any character (‘(‘, ‘|’, ‘&’) as an input and submit the request.
3. Identify whether an exception/error message was generated relating to LDAP (e.g., Page cannot be displayed).

To know more about LDAP, Go through this links

http://www.zytrax.com/books/ldap/

and

http://www.zytrax.com/books/ldap/ch15/