To help you get through this specific level, could you tell me: What do you get when you submit a single quote? Are you seeing a login box or a search field ?
For position 1..length:
The request will look something like this:
Keep adding or removing numbers until the application stops throwing an error. This tells you how many columns the original SELECT statement had. Sql Injection Challenge 5 Security Shepherd
OWASP Security Shepherd is a comprehensive web application security training platform designed to teach developers and security professionals how to identify and remediate vulnerabilities. Among its extensive list of challenges, the SQL Injection (SQLi) modules are critical for understanding how attackers manipulate backend databases.
To perform a UNION SELECT , your injected query must have the same number of columns as the original query. We need to find this number.
The first payload—using double quotes in the password field—is the most straightforward and reliable solution. To help you get through this specific level,
With visible injection points (e.g., column positions 2 and 3), we query the information_schema database—the MySQL system catalog.
In this scenario, the application attempts to sanitize user input by automatically replacing every single quote ( ' ) with a backslash and a quote ( \' ). To a developer, this seems like a solid way to prevent a user from breaking out of the SQL string. However, the logic fails to account for how backslashes themselves are handled.
Why does this contrived challenge matter? Because real-world SQL injection often looks exactly like this. This tells you how many columns the original
If the application returns an error or a message like "Multiple coupons found," you know the input is being executed as part of a SQL query.
This is where the subtlety of the challenge lies. If a user attempts a classic SQL injection attack, such as typing 1' OR 1=1; -- , the single quote will be escaped. The query effectively becomes 1\' OR 1=1; -- , which may not execute as intended or could cause an SQL error, as the escaped quote is treated as a literal character rather than a string delimiter.
However, Security Shepherd 5 specifically expects:
Let’s correct: The actual bypass for Challenge 5 uses .