OWASP Backend Security Project PHP Security Programming

Overview

Example 1

Here follows a tipical Login Forms to authenticate user. Credentials are retrieved on a backend Database by using connection parameters stored in a .inc file.

auth.php

<?php
include('./db.inc');

function sAuthenticateUser($username, $password){
  $authenticatedUserName="";
  if ($link = iMysqlConnect()) {

    $query  = "SELECT username FROM users";
    $query .=                " WHERE username = '".$username."'";
    $query .=                " AND   password = md5('".$password."')";
    $result = mysql_query($query);

    if ($result) {
      if ($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
         $authenticatedUserName =  $row[0];
      }
    }
  }

  return $authenticatedUserName;

}

if ($sUserName = sAuthenticateUser($_POST["username"], 
				   $_POST["password"])) {

  /* successfull authentication code goes here */
   ...
   ...
 } else {

  /* unsuccessfull authentication code goes here */
   ...
   ...
 }

?>

db.inc

<?php

define('DB_HOST',     "localhost");
define('DB_USERNAME', "user");
define('DB_PASSWORD', "password");
define('DB_DATABASE', "owasp");


function iMysqlConnect(){
  $link = mysql_connect(DB_HOST,
  	  DB_USERNAME,
			DB_PASSWORD);

  if ($link && mysql_select_db(DB_DATABASE))
    return $link;
  return FALSE;
}

?>

The above example has two vulnerability:

• Authentication Bypass

  by exploiting a SQL Injection vulnerability Authentication you can authenticate as :

  username ' OR 1=1 #

  password anything

• Information Disclosure

  an attacker may retrieve db.inc on unproper configured WEB Server

Example 2

The following sample code cames from a online book catalog.

getbook.php 


function aGetBookEntry($id) {
  $aBookEntry = NULL;
  $link = iMysqlConnect();

  $query = "SELECT * FROM books WHERE id = $id";
  $result = mysql_query($query);

  if ($result) {
    if ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
      $aBookEntry = $row;
    }
  }
  return $aBookEntry;
}

....
$id = $_GET['id'];
$aBookEntry = aGetBookEntry($id);

/* Display retrieved book information */
...
...

The above example is vulnerable to Blind SQL Injection attack. An attacker exploiting this vulnerability may backup on his laptop your Database content, or even worst can spawn a remote shell into it.

Description

PHP preventing SQL Injection

Escaping Quotes

magic_quotes_gpc escapes quotes from HTTP Request by examing both GET/POST data and Cookie value. The truth is that any other data in HTTP Request isn't escaped and an evil user may attempt to exploit a SQL Injection vulnerability on other HTTP Request data such as User-Agent value. Another drawback is that while it performs well on MySQL (as example) it doesn't works with Microsoft SQL Server where single quote should be escaped with '''

magic_quotes_gpc should never be used since:

• only GET/POST/COOKIE data are escaped in served HTTP Request
• it doesn't guarantee compatibility between different DBMS

Since every application should be portable across WEB Servers we want to rollaback from magic_quotes_gpc each time a php script is running on WEB Server:

function magic_strip_slashes() {
    if (get_magic_quotes()) {

       // GET
       if (is_array($_GET)) {
           foreach ($_GET as $key => $value) {
               $_GET[$key] = stripslashes($value);
           }
       }

       // POST
       if (is_array($_POST)) {
           foreach ($_GET as $key => $value) {
               $_POST[$key] = stripslashes($value);
           }
       }

       // COOKIE
       if (is_array($_COOKIE)) {
           foreach ($_GET as $key => $value) {
               $_COOKIE[$key] = stripslashes($value);
           }
       }
    }
}

and use a DBMS related function to escape quotes such as:

• MySQL: mysql_real_escape_string
• PostgreSQL: pg_escape_string

function sEscapeString($sDatabase, $sQuery) {
    $sResult=NULL;
 
    switch ($sDatabase) {
    case "mysql":
        $sResult = mysql_escape_string($sQuery);
        break;
  
    case "postgresql":
        $sResult = pg_escape_string($sQuery);
        break;

    case "mssql":
        $sResult = str_replace("'", "''",$sQuery);
        break;

    case "oracle":
        $sResult = str_replace("'", "''",$sQuery);
        break;
    }

    return $sResult;
}
}

Both Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server connectors doesn't have a real escape_string function so you need to escape every ' with '' by using your own escapeing function or addslashes().

With properly quotes escaping we can prevent Authentication Bypass vulnerability in Example 1:

auth.php

<?php
include('./db.inc');

function sAuthenticateUser($username, $password){
  $authenticatedUserName="";
  if ($link = iMysqlConnect()) {

    $query  = "SELECT username FROM users";
    $query .=                " WHERE username = '".$username."'";
    $query .=                " AND   password = md5('".$password."')";

    /* escape quotes */
    $result = sEscapeString("mysql", $query);

    if ($result) {
      if ($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
         $authenticatedUserName =  $row[0];
      }
    }
  }

  return $authenticatedUserName;
}

/* start by rollback magic_quotes_gpc action (if any) */

magic_strip_slashes();


if ($sUserName = sAuthenticateUser($_POST["username"], 
                                   $_POST["password"])) {

  /* successfull authentication code goes here */
   ...
   ...
 } else {

  /* unsuccessfull authentication code goes here */
   ...
   ...
 }