NYCPHP Meetup

[Michele Waldman]

I'm not sure which process died, but I was programming one night and all of
the sudden all of my php code was being dumped to my browser.

 

I called my hosting provider and they said the underlying process had died
for some reason.

 

I can't remember if we did a reboot or if the process was started back up
independently.

 

Ever since then, I've taking into consideration that php is not necessarily
that secure.  One hiccup from the server and security could be compromised.
I keep sensitive data out of those files.

 

I was more curious about how it might be implemented in case my client
didn't upgrade the server, but my client will upgrade for more than just
this reason.

 

I know Zencart and other apps doesn't rely on htaccess, but rather php, but,
if I'm going to develop an app for which I am liable, I really think server
level is the only way to go.

 

Michele

 

  _____  

From: talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org [mailto:talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org] On
Behalf Of Justin Dearing
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 9:40 PM
To: NYPHP Talk
Subject: Re: [nycphp-talk] Htaccess and php user account

 

Can you describe a senario where php stops working and as a result php would
stop?

Yes, theoretically apache could be reconfigured so its thinks that .php
files are just a text files, but if mod_php were to "crash", which generally
brings down the worker thread and fixes itself.

 

Session variables and a name and crypted password string in the database are
the way to go generally. I could reccomend more sofisticated approaches,
such as having php authenticate against LDAP, or the mysql database users
(assuming you restrict database access on a per user level), but if your
doing shared hosting (no root access), this is probably the best way.

 

Most php web apps work this way. 

 

On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 8:14 PM, Michele Waldman <mmwaldman at nyc.rr.com>
wrote:

I'm trying to set up a user account with htaccess and mysql.

 

But the shared hosting account doesn't have mod_auth_mysql htaccess module
installed on the machines and I can't get root access.

 

How else are folks implementing accounts?

 

In php?

 

If so, what's the best general way to implement that.  Do you use session
variables for that?

 

My primary concern about implementing accounts in php is that php can stop
running on the server.  If that happens, the security becomes non-existent.
Plus, the php code can be dumped right to the browser.

 

I'd much rather server level security than in processes that can stop.

 

Thoughts on account security approaches, please.

 

Michele


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