Command Injection Attack


Command injection attack is where a threat actor is able to execute arbitrary shell commands on a host via a vulnerable web application.

  • attempts to cause the server to run OS shell commands and return the output to the browser
  • web server should normally be able to prevent:
    • commands from operating outside of the server’s directory root
    • and commands from running with any privilege level other than the web server’s “guest” user
      • is normally granted only very restricted privileges
  • successful command injection attack
    • would find some way of circumventing this security
    • or exploit a web server that is not properly configured