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DVWA - Damn Vulnerable Web Application

| Post sponsored by FaradaySEC | Multiuser Pentest Environment

Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA) is a PHP/MySQL web application that is damn vulnerable. Its main goal is to be an aid for security professionals to test their skills and tools in a legal environment, help web developers better understand the processes of securing web applications and to aid both students & teachers to learn about web application security in a controlled class room environment.

The aim of DVWA is to practice some of the most common web vulnerabilities, with various levels of difficulty, with a simple straightforward interface. Please note, there are both documented and undocumented vulnerabilities with this software. This is intentional. You are encouraged to try and discover as many issues as possible.

WARNING!
Damn Vulnerable Web Application is damn vulnerable! Do not upload it to your hosting provider's public html folder or any Internet facing servers, as they will be compromised. It is recommended using a virtual machine (such as VirtualBox or VMware), which is set to NAT networking mode. Inside a guest machine, you can download and install XAMPP for the web server and database.

Download and install as a docker container
Please ensure you are using aufs due to previous MySQL issues. Run docker info to check your storage driver. If it isn't aufs, please change it as such. There are guides for each operating system on how to do that, but they're quite different so we won't cover that here.

Download
DVWA is available either as a package that will run on your own web server or as a Live CD:
  • DVWA v1.9 Source (Stable) - [1.3 MB] Download ZIP - Released 2015-10-05
  • DVWA v1.0.7 LiveCD - [480 MB] Download ISO - Released 2010-09-08
  • DVWA Development Source (Latest) Download ZIP // git clone https://github.com/ethicalhack3r/DVWA

Installation
Please make sure your config/config.inc.php file exists. Only having a config.inc.php.dist will not be sufficient and you'll have to edit it to suit your environment and rename it to config.inc.php. Windows may hide the trailing extension.

Installation Videos


Windows + XAMPP
The easiest way to install DVWA is to download and install XAMPP if you do not already have a web server setup.
XAMPP is a very easy to install Apache Distribution for Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X. The package includes the Apache web server, MySQL, PHP, Perl, a FTP server and phpMyAdmin.
XAMPP can be downloaded from: https://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
Simply unzip dvwa.zip, place the unzipped files in your public html folder, then point your browser to: http://127.0.0.1/dvwa/setup.php

Linux Packages
If you are using a Debian based Linux distribution, you will need to install the following packages (or their equivalent):
apt-get -y install apache2 mysql-server php php-mysqli php-gd

Database Setup
To set up the database, simply click on the Setup DVWA button in the main menu, then click on the Create / Reset Database button. This will create / reset the database for you with some data in.
If you receive an error while trying to create your database, make sure your database credentials are correct within ./config/config.inc.php. This differs from config.inc.php.dist, which is an example file.
The variables are set to the following by default:
$_DVWA[ 'db_user' ] = 'root';
$_DVWA[ 'db_password' ] = 'p@ssw0rd';
$_DVWA[ 'db_database' ] = 'dvwa';
Note, if you are using MariaDB rather than MySQL (MariaDB is default in Kali), then you can't use the database root user, you must create a new database user. To do this, connect to the database as the root user then use the following commands:
mysql> create database dvwa;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> grant all on dvwa.* to dvwa@localhost identified by 'xxx';
Query OK, 0 rows affected, 1 warning (0.01 sec)

mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

Other Configuration
Depending on your Operating System as well as version of PHP, you may wish to alter the default configuration. The location of the files will be different on a per-machine basis.
Folder Permissions:
  • ./hackable/uploads/ - Needs to be writable by the web service (for File Upload).
  • ./external/phpids/0.6/lib/IDS/tmp/phpids_log.txt - Needs to be writable by the web service (if you wish to use PHPIDS).
PHP configuration:
  • allow_url_include = on - Allows for Remote File Inclusions (RFI) [allow_url_include]
  • allow_url_fopen = on - Allows for Remote File Inclusions (RFI) [allow_url_fopen]
  • safe_mode = off - (If PHP <= v5.4) Allows for SQL Injection (SQLi) [safe_mode]
  • magic_quotes_gpc = off - (If PHP <= v5.4) Allows for SQL Injection (SQLi) [magic_quotes_gpc]
  • display_errors = off - (Optional) Hides PHP warning messages to make it less verbose [display_errors]
File: config/config.inc.php:

Default Credentials
Default username = admin
Default password = password
...can easily be brute forced ;)
Login URL: http://127.0.0.1/dvwa/login.php

Troubleshooting
For the latest troubleshooting information please visit: https://github.com/ethicalhack3r/DVWA/issues
+Q. SQL Injection won't work on PHP v5.2.6.
-A.If you are using PHP v5.2.6 or above you will need to do the following in order for SQL injection and other vulnerabilities to work.
In .htaccess:
Replace (please note it may say mod_php7):
<IfModule mod_php5.c>
    php_flag magic_quotes_gpc off
    #php_flag allow_url_fopen on
    #php_flag allow_url_include on
</IfModule>
With:
<IfModule mod_php5.c>
    magic_quotes_gpc = Off
    allow_url_fopen = On
    allow_url_include = On
</IfModule>
+Q. Command Injection won't work.
-A. Apache may not have high enough privileges to run commands on the web server. If you are running DVWA under Linux make sure you are logged in as root. Under Windows log in as Administrator.

Links
Homepage: http://www.dvwa.co.uk/
Project Home: https://github.com/ethicalhack3r/DVWA
Created by the DVWA team


DVWA - Damn Vulnerable Web Application DVWA - Damn Vulnerable Web Application Reviewed by Zion3R on 6:29 PM Rating: 5