Introduction, discovery, and enumeration

In this section, we will start our journey in Microsoft SQL Server security assessment. We will briefly introduce you to SQL Server and then move on to the discovery process. A significant amount of the section will be a deep dive into the manual and automated aspects of the enumeration process.

SQL Server introduction

Before we jump into the discovery topic, let’s start by looking at SQL Server functionality, fixed server roles, and security mechanisms. SQL Server is an application installed on the OS; in our case, we will focus only on Windows hosts. The server runs as a set of uniquely named Windows services in the context of the service account. The default listening TCP port is 1433, and the UDP port is 1434; however, if more services are running, the list of ports will be longer[1]. In order to get access to stored data, a user must pass authentication and authorization checks.

Authentication verifies whether a user has...