Answer Description

SQL injection is a code injection technique where a user input is actually given a SQL code, used to display or insert information into a database. Validating and sanitizing user input will prevent this type of attack.

Wikipedia

SQL injection is a code injection technique used to attack data-driven applications, in which malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution (e.g. to dump the database contents to the attacker). SQL injection must exploit a security vulnerability in an application's software, for example, when user input is either incorrectly filtered for string literal escape characters embedded in SQL statements or user input is not strongly typed and unexpectedly executed. SQL injection is mostly known as an attack vector for websites but can be used to attack any type of SQL database. SQL injection attacks allow attackers to spoof identity, tamper with existing data, cause repudiation issues such as voiding transactions or changing balances, allow the complete disclosure of all data on the system, destroy the data or make it otherwise unavailable, and become administrators of the database server. In a 2012 study, it was observed that the average web application received four attack campaigns per month, and retailers received twice as many attacks as other industries.