Emergency SQL Injection Remediation — Fast Containment, Forensic Cleanup & Long-Term Recovery

Direct database impact: theft or alteration of sensitive data (accounts, transactions, PII).

Persistent backdoors via stored procedures, triggers, or rogue admin accounts.

Lateral movement and silent exfiltration over time.

SEO/UX damage: spam content injections and search-engine warnings.

Unknown DB users, strange stored procedures, unexpected rows.

Spammy/unknown content appearing on site pages.

Suspicious outbound traffic or anomalous queries in logs.

WAF/IDS alerts showing SQLi attempts or confirmed success.

Customer/regulatory notifications about leaked or altered data.

Emergency triage & isolation: non-intrusive verification, containment, temporary hardening (virtual patching, rate-limits).

Forensic snapshot: immutable copies of DB/files/logs with chain-of-custody.

Scope & impact analysis: affected schemas/tables/SPs/triggers/users; exposure window estimate.

Database malware removal: purge injected rows, remove malicious SPs/triggers, sanitize content fields.

Root-cause remediation: parameterized queries/prepared statements, input validation, secure query builders/ORM.

Credentials rotation: DB users, API keys, certificates; ACL review.

Validation & verification: re-scan, targeted pentests, close the vector.

Recovery & continuity: restore from clean backups, reconcile integrity; documentation.

Monitoring: ongoing query/traffic monitoring, WAF tuning, health checks.

Reporting & compliance: detailed timeline, evidence packs, support for breach notifications.

Malicious stored procedures/functions used as command channels.

Triggers reinserting payloads; rogue admin accounts/roles.

Injected rows with spam links/phishing JS; malicious jobs/agents.

Tampered configuration entries or secrets kept in DB.

Use prepared statements/parameter binding; avoid unsafe dynamic SQL.

Validate & sanitize inputs with strict whitelists and length checks.

Enforce least-privilege DB accounts; monitor unusual query patterns.

Add SAST/peer review; deploy WAF/virtual rules until code ships.

Minimal deletions; preserve business data.

Reconciliation with last-known-good backups.

Transaction-safe operations with rollback.

QA on key flows and reports after cleanup.

Proven incident response & forensic capability.

Secure development expertise (parameterization, validation).

Deep DBMS knowledge (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, Oracle).

Clear SLAs, rapid response windows, compliance support.

Triage & containment: 1–4 hours (emergency cases).

Initial cleanup of visible artifacts: hours to 24h (moderate DBs).

Full cleanup + root-cause fix + verification: 1–7 days.

Enterprise forensics & compliance packs: 7–30+ days.

Forensic artifacts, timelines, and technical appendices for notifications.

Coordination with hosting and third parties; regulator-ready documentation.