Essential PHP Security [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

You would think that with all of the books being published recently about PHP that everyone and his mother is writing PHP code. This may be true, but even if it is not, it is certain that many people and businesses are using PHP code, in concert with other applications like MySQL, to produce dynamic web sites. This is all well and good because PHP is a high-quality coding language especially well-suited to web applications. It is also open-source, meaning well-supported by a community of coders and developers and cost-free. The one problem is that, like all coding languages, poorly designed or written PHP applications can be security risks potentially allowing Internet miscreants to cause damage to web servers, hosts, and users. It appears to be the case that there are many, many instances of insecure PHP code in use, hence, the value in a targeted book on PHP security, like "Essential PHP Security", by Chris Shiflett.

The author is an internationally-known and accomplished expert on PHP security. He is the founder of the PHP Security Consortium, a group of volunteers who help educate the PHP community, and a well-known contributor to the PHP-general mail digest. The book is designed to provide security information and guidelines and explain the most common types of attacks and how to prevent or repel them.

"Essential PHP Security" is a slight volume of only 109 pages, including index. Shiflett wastes no time and immediately jumps into his topic, starting with his opinion on the use of the PHP concept of "register globals", a configuration setting which he recommends against using in favor of "superglobal arrays". He next turns to how to configure your web server setup to properly deal with error reporting, both for the developer's use and to prevent providing clues to any interloper trying to illegally access your site.

The balance of Chapter 1 itemizes general principles of Internet security: Defense in Depth - redundantly using more than one technique to secure your site; Least Privileges - writing code to minimize access to the least needed for any particular user's needs; Simple is Beautiful - the writing of clear, simple code, to make troubleshooting and auditing easier; and Minimize Exposure - taking steps to design and implement programs to eliminate or at least minimize display of sensitive data or code - don't even store credit card information unless absolutely necessary, he suggests.

Next, comes "Best Practices" - balancing risk vs. usability, keeping track of data, filtering of all input, escaping output, and in all cases, distinguishing between filtered and tainted data. These principles and practices are illustrated with short code snippets comparing insecure vs. more secure code.

The next seven chapters deal with specific elements of a website, the types of attacks that can occur with each, and tips and suggestions on how to deal with these attacks. These elements include vulnerabilities in forms and URLs, databases and SQL, sessions and cookies, PHP "include" files, files and commands, authentication and authorization, and shared hosting.

The author credibly describes by examples the types of attacks against forms and URLs - cross-site scripting, cross site request forgeries, spoofing of forms, and insecure Raw HTTP requests. Authentication attacks include dictionary attacks, password sniffing, replay attacks, and cookie stealing. For each, he briefly describes how the attacks work, shows examples of insecure code, and provides examples of secure code.

For each of the elements dealt with, the author follows the same model: describe briefly the types of attacks against each element, show conventionally-used insecure code, and show how to eliminate the insecure parts of the code. Most of the security defenses entail filtering data from outside sources, especially form input, email, and XML documents from other web applications. Other defense techniques include using SSL for encrypted data transmissions, strengthening identification methods, hard-coding file paths, and using token techniques in addition to PHP encryption functions. Interestingly, Schiflett believes it is impossible to achieve a high level of security in a shared hosting situation. He provides suggestions on what security measures will help the most.

What is most useful about this book is the aggregation in one place of descriptions of all of these security attacks, and vulnerabilities in PHP code, along with suggestions on dealing with them. The organization of the material is good, however. I believe the author falls short in his code examples. There appears to be a disconnect between the descriptive text (which is clear enough) and the examples, which are not, at least to me, a novice in PHP. I could not readily follow the detailed code segments, although I could understand in principle what was going on.

Some of the code segments were barely explained and some were inadequately explained. The concepts of the attacking techniques were understandable, but the detailed implementations were not. There are a small handful of illustrations, but I found them too simplistic and inadequate. To be fair, this may be a failure of the reviewer. More experienced PHP folks may not complain about the presentations. For them, this book gives them what they need to know about handling the security aspects of their applications, but my guess is that it is the less accomplished coders who need the most help (although those same people are probably writing the types of applications and sites least likely to be targeted by miscreants.)

There are three short appendices presenting suggestions on how to configure a PHP installation to minimize weaknesses, suggestions about avoiding certain powerful PHP functions, especially system commands, to minimize risk, and a short segment on cryptography features in PHP.

I really wanted to write a glowing review of Mr. Shiflett's book, Essential PHP Security, but I can't help but dissapointed by the weaknesses.

The author's blog (http://shiflett.org/) and PHP security website (http://phpsec.org/) are good sources of information on PHP security and web creation in general. With the wisdom hinted at via his websites, I looked forward to more in depth insights and specifics in his book. Unfortunately for Mr. Shiflett, writing a book is not like writing 'bites' for a blog or marketing yourself as experienced and knowledgable. This book reads like an anthology of blog articles and seminar presentations and that weakness kills what should otherwise really be an essential text.

As another helpful reviewer pointed out, this book is a not appropriate for new PHP programmers. That reviewer also noted that it is precisely new initiates to PHP that need these lessons the most. The protective measures suggested in the book are presented superficially. The author highlights the vulnerability, but then only hints at a protective measure by providing a code snip-it which totally lacks context. Most novice readers expect examples of how to apply and integrate the suggested technique effectively and efficiently within the basics they already know.

Mr. Shiflett writes in his acknowledgements, "Written during one of the busiest years of my life ... [the people at O'reilly] have gone out of their way to make the entire process fit around my writing style and busy schedule."

Smoking gun?

For a full price book, the author had room, but perhaps not the desire to provide more substance. Concise does not have to be superficial. The book's main content is 85 pages -- followed by three appendices between pages 87 and 103. The index runs between pages 105 and 109. Substantive implementation details are missing and should have been included.

For example, in chapter 1 and later in chapter 2, the author recommends filtering input by identifying input, filtering the input, and distinguishing between filtered and unfiltered (tainted) data. This recommendation is explicitly explained twice in the book and repeated throughout. If you expect any examples demonstrating this in practical use, there are none. If you expect a class that exemplifies a way you might integrate this technique with your exsisting code, there is none. In other words, if you want to learn even remotely by example, you may be disappointed by this book.

As a last note, Appendix C talks briefly about cryptography in PHP. Based on this book, cryptography does not appear to be one of the author's strong areas of knowledge. For new PHP programmers who also work with SQL, Mr. Shiflett gives you just enough information to frustrate you (at best -- or hang yourself at worst). The author lists a number of other books and websites about cryptography on the first page of the Appendix. That is his best advice. Also take a look at http://www.openssl.org/ as an information resource.

In sum, I don't argue with the value of the hints Mr. Shiflett provides in his book, but this book is weak on substance and does not provide the examples necessary to teach the reader that the suggestions are practical for real implementation. Perhaps instead of this book, the many authors of the "How to PHP and MySQL" clone books need to integrate and implement these protective measures in their texts right from the start. Unfortunately, Mr. Shiflett's book does not bridge the existing gap. If you buy this book, expect to be searching other books and the web for ways to effectively and efficiently perform the tasks the author recommends. If you already know how to implement the measures, you probably did not need this book in the first place.

This book helped me identify and report a critical security vulnerability in a commercial third party PHP application we were planning to deploy in a business-critical fashion. For that alone, it was worth its weight in gold.

This books is the antidoe to the common misperception that PHP applications fall short on security. With sparkling clarity, Chris demystifies dozens of attacks and provides both solid theoretical and practical bases for coding securely in PHP. Throughout his work as a PHP security consultant, and culminating in this book, Chris has defined the lexicon for web security -- telling us precisely what it means to filter input, and precisely what it means to escape output -- as well as when, how and why. This is nothing short of a defining work on web application security as it applies specifically to PHP.

While this book does not cover using encoders (like the Zend Encoder or IonCube Encoder) to heighten security in a plain-text scripting language, every other topic you would expect to be covered is treated -- above all -- with accuracy, and all in just over a hundred pages. Where other authors might potificte to fill pages, Chris crafted this book to live up to its title -- it is indeed essential, distilled, and precise. Therefore there is little excuse from this point on to not have read it at least once, and thumb through it from time to time when developing or auditing a PHP application. I intend to make it required reading in my department, and recommend it highly to colleagues in other companies developing web applications in PHP.