Slashdot Mirror
Month of PHP Bugs Has Begun
An anonymous reader writes "The previously announced Month of PHP Bugs started three days ago, and already lists 8 security vulnerabilities in PHP and PHP related software. From the site: 'This initiative is an effort to improve the security of PHP. However we will not concentrate on problems in the PHP language that might result in insecure PHP applications, but on security vulnerabilities in the PHP core. During March 2007 old and new security vulnerabilities in the Zend Engine, the PHP core and the PHP extensions will be disclosed on a day by day basis. We will also point out necessary changes in the current vulnerability management process used by the PHP Security Response Team.'"
Is PHP defective by design?
It was. A lot of work has been done in the last couple of major versions to fix this, but still a lot of installations are crippled in the name of backward compatibility.
Most of what we're seeing here though is just run-of-the-mill sloppy coding. Create a lot of references to a variable and overflow its (16-bit) reference count? Please. That should never have happened.
Fortunately, it seems most of the bugs released so far don't affect the majority of installations. We have a number of 'executing arbitrary PHP code can let somebody own your web server' -- well, most of us don't let random people run arbitrary PHP code anyway. We have some 'deserialising arbitrary data can let somebody own your web server' issues too, but then there has been a long-standing warning that PHP's deserialise function isn't secure anyway, so that shouldn't affect anyone who's been paying attention. We have some issues with the Zend Platform, but I'm not sure how many people have that installed. So far, the only issue to affect me, is the phpinfo XSS vulnerability -- and that just meant I had to delete my phpinfo.php file that I kept in the root of each domain I host.
> I had to delete my phpinfo.php file that I kept in the root of each domain I host.
if you left an open phpinfo() on your server (giving potential attackers access to filepaths, module version numbers, configuration options, apache server configuration options), you have a lot more to worry about than a little XSS.
unfortunatly, you're not alone.