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
> 
> 

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