bugtraq - Re: PHP security (or the lack thereof)

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Message-ID: <20060624082800.GA18642@istic.org>
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 09:28:00 +0100
From: Daniel Hulme <bugtraq@...blezero.uklinux.net>
To: bugtraq@...urityfocus.com
Subject: Re: PHP security (or the lack thereof)

> The other is to contrive a language that is both sufficient for dynamic
> web content development, and also *not* Turing-complete. I have no idea
> what such a language might look like, or even whether the intersection
> of these two requirements is the null set.
Nice idea, but PHP in its default configuration is *not*
Turing-complete. The default configuration causes scripts to time out
after 30s of operation, so the halting problem is trivially decidable:
all scripts halt on all inputs. Notice that not being Turing-complete
doesn't stop people writing insecure code in it. A toy language whose
only operation is to change the root password to "password" would also
not be Turing-strong, but would make it even easier to shoot yourself in
the box.

Something that might have more luck is a system of taint checking like
Perl offers. However, making sure programs adhere to a complex
specification -- and a specification that covered all security holes
would be very complex -- has been an open research question for some
years. Some schools of thought lean towards formal methods and
correctness-proving, others towards software engineering techniques, but
there is no ideal solution, and the sort of people who are writing the
kind of PHP scripts routinely advertised on bugtraq have probably never
heard of either. Proof-carrying code might help remedy this, because the
server administrator would be able to mandate that any script executed
on the server carry a proof with it; however, I believe the amount of
programmer-generated annotation required on current implementations
would be prohibitive to the largely untrained programmers we are trying
to reach.

-- 
There once was a teacher of great renown,      Gather your goods        
Whose words were like the tablets of stone,    and follow me            
Because it's easier to learn than unlearn,     Or you will surely die.  
Because we've passed the point of no return.   Paul Simon, 'The Teacher'