How to install Damn Vulnerable Web Application – DVWA (v 1.0.8) under BackTrack 5 (R3)

Adrian Citu

This post present how to install Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA) application on BackTrack 5 R3 distribution. In order to automate the install I used to script from  installDVWA.sh – Script to Download, Configure, and launch Damn Vulnerable Web App on Backtrack 5. The problem with this script is that it was written to install the version 1.0.7 of DVWA and it doesn’t work for a new version of DVWA.

So, here are the modification that I’ve made to the initial script in order to make it run again:

  • Get the application from github by replacing the line
wget http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/project/dvwa/DVWA-1.0.7.zip

with (the source forge proxy was not available, so get the zip directly from github)

wget https://github.com/RandomStorm/DVWA/archive/v1.0.8.zip
  • Changed the name of the zip file retrieved from github.
mv /tmp/v1.0.8.zip /tmp/DVWA-1.0.8.zip
  • The zip will be expanded in the /tmp/DVWA-1.0.8 folder; rename this folder to dvwa after the line unzip DVWA-1.0.8.zip > /dev/null :
mv /tmp/DVWA-1.0.8 /tmp/dvwa

Now if you launch the script the following error will be print:

[*] Updating Database...ERROR 1146 (42S02) at line 1: Table 'dvwa.users' doesn't exist
ERROR 1146 (42S02) at line 1: Table 'dvwa.users' doesn't exist
ERROR 1146 (42S02) at line 1: Table 'dvwa.users' doesn't exist
ERROR 1146 (42S02) at line 1: Table 'dvwa.users' doesn't exist
ERROR 1146 (42S02) at line 1: Table 'dvwa.users' doesn't exist

This is due to fact that the PHP server tries to connect to the mysql db using the root account and the password ‘p@ssw0rd’. Now, you have 2 choices, either modify the DVWA config.inc.php file (and replace the password for the root user) or you modify the password of the mysql root user on your server.

  • Modify the password of mysql root account. In a console, as root tie the following command:
mysqladmin -u root -p'toor' password p@ssw0rd
  • Modify the password of the mysql root account in the script; replace ‘toor’ by ‘p@ssw0rd’.

This is the diff between the original script and my own version:

19c19
< wget http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/project/dvwa/DVWA-1.0.7.zip
---
> wget https://github.com/RandomStorm/DVWA/archive/v1.0.8.zip
21a22
> mv /tmp/v1.0.8.zip /tmp/DVWA-1.0.8.zip
23c24
< unzip DVWA-1.0.7.zip > /dev/null
---
> unzip DVWA-1.0.8.zip > /dev/null
25a27,28
> mv /tmp/DVWA-1.0.8 /tmp/dvwa
> 
27c30
< rm DVWA-1.0.7.zip > /dev/null
---
> rm DVWA-1.0.8.zip > /dev/null
64,68c67,71
< mysql -u root --password='toor' -e 'update dvwa.users set avatar = "/hackable/users/gordonb.jpg" where user = "gordonb";'
< mysql -u root --password='toor' -e 'update dvwa.users set avatar = "/hackable/users/smithy.jpg" where user = "smithy";'
< mysql -u root --password='toor' -e 'update dvwa.users set avatar = "/hackable/users/admin.jpg" where user = "admin";'
< mysql -u root --password='toor' -e 'update dvwa.users set avatar = "/hackable/users/pablo.jpg" where user = "pablo";'
< mysql -u root --password='toor' -e 'update dvwa.users set avatar = "/hackable/users/1337.jpg" where user = "1337";'
---
> mysql -u root --password='p@ssw0rd' -e 'update dvwa.users set avatar = "/hackable/users/gordonb.jpg" where user = "gordonb";'
> mysql -u root --password='p@ssw0rd' -e 'update dvwa.users set avatar = "/hackable/users/smithy.jpg" where user = "smithy";'
> mysql -u root --password='p@ssw0rd' -e 'update dvwa.users set avatar = "/hackable/users/admin.jpg" where user = "admin";'
> mysql -u root --password='p@ssw0rd' -e 'update dvwa.users set avatar = "/hackable/users/pablo.jpg" where user = "pablo";'
> mysql -u root --password='p@ssw0rd' -e 'update dvwa.users set avatar = "/hackable/users/1337.jpg" where user = "1337";'