It's been said time and time again: reconnaissance is perhaps the most critical phase of an attack. It's especially important when preparing an attack against a database since one wrong move can destroy every last bit of data, which usually isn't the desired outcome. Metasploit contains a variety of modules that can be used to enumerate MySQL databases, making it easy to gather valuable information.
What Information Is Valuable to an Attacker?
To a skilled hacker, almost any data can be important when it comes to preparing an attack. When we think of SQL from this perspective, a lot of times our minds go right to SQL injection, but gathering information about the database itself can sometimes be just as important.
Things to look for when enumerating a database include the version, as sometimes a successful attack can be as easy as finding an exploit for an outdated version. Other things to look for are valid credentials, which can not only be used for the database, but often can be used for other applications or systems (password reuse is a real thing, and a real problem for organizations). Lastly, information about the structure of the database can be extremely useful for performing SQL injection since knowing what's there is often half the battle.
Today, we will be using Metasploit to enumerate some of this information on a MySQL database. We'll be attacking enumerate mysql databases metasploit
