Using Automated Fix Generation to Secure SQL Statements

Since 2002, over 10% of total cyber vulnerabilities were SQL injection vulnerabilities. Since most developers are not experienced software security practitioners, a solution for correctly fixing SQL injection vulnerabilities that does not require security expertise is desirable. In this paper, we propose an automated method for removing SQL injection vulnerabilities from Java code by converting plain text SQL statements into prepared statements. Prepared statements restrict the way that input can affect the execution of the statement. An automated solution allows developers to remove SQL injection vulnerabilities by replacing vulnerable code with generated secure code. In a formative case study, we tested our automated fix generation algorithm on five toy Java programs which contained seeded SQL injection vulnerabilities and a set of object traceability issues. The results of our case study show that our technique was able remove SQL injection vulnerabilities in five different statement configurations.