Re: FW: PHP 4.x session spoofing

From: Gunzour (gunzourat_private)
Date: Tue Jan 15 2002 - 05:17:12 PST

  • Next message: Ivan Sergio Borgonovo: "IE FORM DOS"

    I reported this to bugs.php.net over a year ago (bug
    #8189) and more recently I wrote an article for a PHP
    website about the use of PHP sessions for
    authentication, although that article has not yet been
    published.
    
    > Since PHP4 there is a native support for sessions,
    > which was derived
    > from the PHPLib. But instead of using a SQL backend
    > to store these
    > IDs, they chose to store them as files in /tmp.
    
    You can configure PHP to store sessions in an SQL
    database with session_set_save_handler.  That will add
    to the complexity of your configuration, but will
    probably not make it any more secure.  (How secure is
    your SQL backend?)
    
    > I suggest to create a directory called
    > 
    >   mkdir /tmp/php_sessions/
    
    You're still in the /tmp directory, so there's still a
    potential for misuse.  I could do "mv php_sessions
    php_sessions_old; mkdir php_sessions; echo 'juicy
    session data here' >
    php_sessions/sess_g35g5g54gg45wg85" and create my own
    sessions, assuming I know what data needs to be in the
    session file.  
    
    This may protect you from casual shell users, but what
    about malicious PHP scripts, or other sites in a
    virtual hosting environment?
    
    
    
    __________________________________________________
    Do You Yahoo!?
    Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail!
    http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 15 2002 - 23:55:22 PST