On 30 Jul 2015, at 17:02, Joe Watkins <pthre...@pthreads.org> wrote: > Even if some of those people replying haven't read or don't understand what > you are suggesting, it is not a good tactic to assume that and reply with > "read the RFC".
Hi Joe, Sorry about yesterday, I have done as you have said, and I have read those responses again, but unfortunately I still feel that I was right in my assumptions (notes below, maybe some interesting additions?). In general I have been getting very frustrated that no-one seems to really care about security (and to be fair, it has been annoying me for far too many years). Keeping in mind that I work with other developers who routinely keep introducing vulnerabilities like SQLi, XSS, CSRF... and doing annoying things like switching the CSP off, because they copy/paste some hideous/insecure JS, and can't be bothered to work out why the "eval" function isn't working. So maybe I should start a new thread, without Matt's subject (btw Matt, I really appreciate what you are trying todo, I disagree with the blocking element, and I think we can also address more than just SQL injection vulnerabilities)... maybe something like "I've found this one weird trick that will fix every security issue"... sorry, I hate that kind of approach, but if it gets a response, maybe its worth it :-) Craig -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87346 From: Matt Tait Reply: N/A Original suggestion. -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87348 From: Rowan Collins Reply: Matt Tait Suggestion to Matt to look for previous RFCs. -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87350 From: Christoph Becker Reply: Matt Tait Points out the existing Taint RFC from 2008, by Wietse Venema. -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87355 From: Pierre Joye Reply: Matt Tait Pointing out that there is more than SQLi (true), and it might be an impossible task (I disagree, as explained later). -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87361 From: Thomas Bley Reply: Matt Tait Suggesting the use of bound parameters / prepared statements, which I agree is how it should be coded by the website developers, but I think the PHP language itself can help identify when this has not been done (just by raising a notice, not blocking anything). Also Thomas points out that static code analysis could identify these issues, but these are far from perfect, and PHP is in a much better position to be doing this... and has the advantage of being available to everyone. Just to note, I've played with a couple of static code analysers which cost in the region of £19,000 per year, and they still don't find the same number of escaping issues that my suggestion can find (they do look at other issues, so don't get rid of them, but this one thing that can be done better with the programming language itself). -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87363 From: Lester Caine Reply: Matt Tait Short answer saying you should not use mysql... which I think is a bit short sighted (on the assumption that mysqli is a similar interface for most website developers). I'm not against using tools like ORMs (e.g. Doctrine), bound parameters / prepared statements, or even stored procedures... but they all have issues, and are all vulnerable to the kind of misuse I'm trying to address (explained in the next email). -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87370 From: Me (Craig Francis) Reply: Lester Caine Just saying I disagree with Lester, and giving a very simple example of how developers can still mess up (once you start adding some abstractions, like an ORM, this becomes much harder to detect, and is why I'm so insistent that PHP needs to be checking for these issues). This is where I also suggest an alternative to Matt's original suggestion (something I posted 12 days before, and didn't really get any response). -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87383 From: Lester Caine Reply: Me (Craig Francis) Kind of missing the point (maybe my example was too simple), and is talking about how Matts solution would cause problems. And I agree (sorry Matt), I don't think Matt's solution would work... but if Lester had read my reply, he would have seen that my suggestion was about education (but it can also help experienced developers as well). -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87386 From: Me (Craig Francis) Reply: Lester Caine Trying to explain to Lester that I agree on education, and pointing out that my solution is different... and how (maybe my email was too long to read?). -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87391 From: Joe Watkins Reply: Me (Craig Francis) Saying you agree with Pierre... I do as well, as Pierre was talking about Matt's solution. -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87393 From: Me (Craig Francis) Reply: Joe Watkins Pointing out that my suggestion was different... I realise I'm now trying to derail Matt's original thread (this one seems to be getting some attention), but I really want to address these same issues. -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87396 From: Xinchen Hui Reply: Joe Watkins Giving a quick status update on the original 2008 implementation... which I personally think is good, but could be made better by switching the logic around (I believe this will make the implementation easier, and avoid many edge cases). -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87400 From: Scott Arciszewski Reply: Matt Tait Pointing out that Cross-Site Scripting is a bigger issue now... where I think that taints can address both issues (and more). He also says that prepared statements is a solved problem (something that I partially disagree with, and have explained above, but I realise that Scott is replying to Matt's original email, so may not have read that far yet). -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87403 From: Me (Craig Francis) Reply: Xinchen Hui Just saying that I appreciate the work Xinchen is doing, and offering to help (assuming I can)... I do also go off on a bit of a tangent, as I think that if we invert the 2008 RFC to mark things when they are escaped (rather than tainting everything as they are created), then I think the implementation would be a lot easier. -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87404 From: Me (Craig Francis) Reply: Scott Arciszewski Pointing out that I have a different suggestion. I also wanted to say that I don't think SQL injection is a solved problem, as I tried to explain earlier (which Scott may not have read yet)... but I certainly didn't want Scott to just sit back and think everything is solved now, so no need to discuss. -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87405 From: Scott Arciszewski Reply: Me (Craig Francis) Skipping over my suggestion, and just saying that education is needed... which is what I'm also trying to do. But as PHP is the only thing that can be forced in front of a new developer, it is really the only common thing that can do that education (there is no way you can find and talk to every single new developer just by answering questions on Stack Overflow). And just as an example, college students leaning to write C programs in 2015 and creating buffer overflow vulnerabilities... they still make mistakes (even highly experienced developers still make these mistakes)... and you also have to recognise that not every programmer will go to a college, and that not all colleges actually teach their students about this (unfortunately). -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87406 From: Ronald Chmara Reply: ??? I'm going to assume this is a reply to Matt's suggestion (or just the subject). And I agree, that suggestion would break every single application... hence why I'm not suggesting that approach. -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87407 From: Me (Craig Francis) Reply: Ronald Chmara I'm just explaining that I've hijacked the email thread started by Matt, and that there is more to the discussion. -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87408 From: Me (Craig Francis) Reply: Scott Arciszewski I am getting a little frustrated, and just want to move the discussion on. Unfortunately what you don't know is that I've been having this issue for too many years, and I'm getting quite annoyed that we aren't addressing these problems in a simple way. Instead, what I keep seeing is more complicated half solutions (e.g. ORMs and query builders, where typical website developers have no idea what the SQL/DB is doing, so vulnerabilities still creep in, and introduce other problems like n+1). The amount of times I've been to PHP conferences where the speaker is explaining some new way that they are doing OOP (or maybe even functional programming), and I'm sure they are really proud of their highly complex solution that few people in the audience understand (and no, I'm usually able to follow along, my experience is trying to explain what the talk was about to another audience member afterwards). But ultimately they haven't addressed anything todo with security, and it is often less performant (typical response "hey, get a faster computer"), it has instead taken them 3+ months to implement, has resulted in another 1 or 2 layers of abstraction that the typical developer does not understand (they just run it, and hope for the best). Then in 6 months time they will have moved on to a different complex solution, and can't be bothered to support the old one any more (because they just want something hard/complex to work on? I'm assuming it's an ego thing?). -------------------------------------------------- http://news.php.net/php.internals/87409 From: Joe Watkins Reply: Me (Craig Francis) Where we are today... where you are talking about the RFC (from 2008, or the one from Matt), not what I've just said about my suggestion (which, if you haven't read, is different). -------------------------------------------------- On 30 Jul 2015, at 17:02, Joe Watkins <pthre...@pthreads.org> wrote: > Even if some of those people replying haven't read or don't understand what > you are suggesting, it is not a good tactic to assume that and reply with > "read the RFC". > > There is a good chance the majority of the people replying have read the RFC, > and found reason to be negative, reserved, cautious, or whatever. > > The best thing you can do now is read those responses again, and try to find > what they are saying, if you want the conversation to continue. > > Cheers > Joe > > On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 4:38 PM, Craig Francis <cr...@craigfrancis.co.uk> > wrote: > On 30 Jul 2015, at 16:24, Scott Arciszewski <sc...@paragonie.com> wrote: > > > Just because the solution is known doesn't mean it's known to everyone. > > > > Yes, and if you could just read what I was suggesting, rather than looking at > the subject of this email (and the suggestion by Matt), then you will notice > this is what I'm trying to do (so not just people asking questions on Stack > Overflow). > > My suggestion is to educate, it also has a nice side effect of having a > simple checking process for everything else (without breaking anything). > > > > > > > > > > On 30 Jul 2015, at 16:24, Scott Arciszewski <sc...@paragonie.com> wrote: > > > On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 11:20 AM, Craig Francis > > <cr...@craigfrancis.co.uk> wrote: > >> On 30 Jul 2015, at 14:43, Scott Arciszewski <sc...@paragonie.com> wrote: > >> > >>> This may have been true at one point in time, but my own experience > >>> and the statistics collected by Dan Kaminsky of White Hat Security > >>> indicates that Cross-Site Scripting vulnerabilities are much more > >>> prevalent in 2015 than SQL Injection, especially in business > >>> applications. > >> > >> > >> Good, because my suggestion was also addressing XSS with poor (or > >> completely missing) HTML escaping... have a look: > >> > >> http://news.php.net/php.internals/87207 > >> > >> https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=69886 > >> > >> Now I admit it won't fix everything with XSS (as HTML escaping is a bit > >> harder), but it certainly will pick up quite a lot of the issues (and it > >> wont break anything either, just help developers identify problems). > >> > >> And no, SQL injection is far from a solved problem... this is why, after > >> 15 years of me trying to tell my fellow developers to not make these > >> mistakes, I'm still finding them making them over and over again... hence > >> why I'm making the above suggestion. > >> > >> Craig > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> On 30 Jul 2015, at 14:43, Scott Arciszewski <sc...@paragonie.com> wrote: > >> > >>> On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 1:33 PM, Matt Tait <matt.t...@gmail.com> wrote: > >>>> Hi all, > >>>> > >>>> I've written an RFC (and PoC) about automatic detection and blocking of > >>>> SQL > >>>> injection vulnerabilities directly from inside PHP via automated taint > >>>> analysis. > >>>> > >>>> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/sql_injection_protection > >>>> > >>>> In short, we make zend_strings track where their value originated. If it > >>>> originated as a T_STRING, from a primitive (like int) promotion, or as a > >>>> concatenation of such strings, it's query that can't have been > >>>> SQL-injected > >>>> by an attacker controlled string. If we can't prove that the query is > >>>> safe, > >>>> that means that the query is either certainly vulnerable to a > >>>> SQL-injection > >>>> vulnerability, or sufficiently complex that it should be parameterized > >>>> just-to-be-sure. > >>>> > >>>> There's also a working proof of concept over here: > >>>> > >>>> http://phpoops.cloudapp.net/oops.php > >>>> > >>>> You'll notice that the page makes a large number of SQL statements, most > >>>> of > >>>> which are not vulnerable to SQL injection, but one is. The proof of > >>>> concept > >>>> is smart enough to block that one vulnerable request, and leave all of > >>>> the > >>>> others unchanged. > >>>> > >>>> In terms of performance, the cost here is negligible. This is just basic > >>>> variable taint analysis under the hood, (not an up-front intraprocedurale > >>>> static analysis or anything complex) so there's basically no slow down. > >>>> > >>>> PHP SQL injections are the #1 way PHP applications get hacked - and all > >>>> SQL > >>>> injections are the result of a developer either not understanding how to > >>>> prevent SQL injection, or taking a shortcut because it's fewer keystrokes > >>>> to do it a "feels safe" rather than "is safe" way. > >>>> > >>>> What do you all think? There's obviously a bit more work to do; the PoC > >>>> currently only covers mysqli_query, but I thought this stage is an > >>>> interesting point to throw it open to comments before working to complete > >>>> it. > >>>> > >>>> Matt > >>> > >>> Hi Matt, > >>> > >>>> PHP SQL injections are the #1 way PHP applications get hacked - and all > >>>> SQL > >>>> injections are the result of a developer either not understanding how to > >>>> prevent SQL injection, or taking a shortcut because it's fewer keystrokes > >>>> to do it a "feels safe" rather than "is safe" way. > >>> > >>> This may have been true at one point in time, but my own experience > >>> and the statistics collected by Dan Kaminsky of White Hat Security > >>> indicates that Cross-Site Scripting vulnerabilities are much more > >>> prevalent in 2015 than SQL Injection, especially in business > >>> applications. If Google has information that indicates that SQLi is > >>> still more prevalent than XSS, I'd love to see this data. > >>> > >>> In my opinion, SQL injection is almost a solved problem. Use prepared > >>> statements where you can, and strictly whitelist where you cannot > >>> (i.e. "ORDER BY {$column} ASC") > >>> > >>> Scott Arciszewski > >>> Chief Development Officer > >>> Paragon Initiative Enterprises <https://paragonie.com> > >>> > >>> -- > >>> PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List > >>> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > >>> > >> > > > > Just because the solution is known doesn't mean it's known to > > everyone. Diffusion of knowledge and good habits is the hardest > > problem in application security to solve. Look, for example, at how > > many college students learn to write C programs with buffer overflow > > vulnerabilities in 2015. We need more effort on education, which is > > part of what I've been focusing on with Paragon Initiative and Stack > > Overflow. > > > > Scott Arciszewski > > Chief Development Officer > > Paragon Initiative Enterprises <https://paragonie.com> > > > -- > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > >
