[FX.php List] Security Question

[Steve Winter]

Hi Jonathan,

First off, as long as the file has a .php extension, or the extension that
it does have is configured by your webserver to be processed as PHP, then
the security related risk is low... if someone does (somehow, since no
spider ever will) discover the site, the PHP processeser will parse the
file, load a bunch of variables, and that will be the end of it since
there's nothing in the (typical) file to output anything to the browser...

That said, it's technically possible to create a request for the file from a
web server, which I guess is undesireable...

The solution is to move the file from it's current location, in a web
accessible folder, and place it in the default 'includes' folder, which is
not web accessible, only include-accessible...

I seem to recall talking with you about this folder in the past, I think it
relateds to having 'global' include files for multiple separate virtual
'hosts' on your server...

If you do a phpinfo() you'll be able to locate the default include folder
(or if you've got error reporting turned on, simply include 'foo.php' in a
test page and read the error...

By default, if no path to an include file is specified, PHP will look for a
file with that name in the same folder as the file doing the include... if
it doesn't find it there, it'll look in the default PHP include folder...

If you do go down this router, you may need to have a different file for
each virtual site that you host, since you'll likely need to have different
values in those for the different databases in question...

Hope this makes sense, if not, let me know...

Cheers
(Very busy) Steve (which is why no posts lately ;-)

-----Original Message-----
From: fx.php_list-bounces at mail.iviking.org
[mailto:fx.php_list-bounces at mail.iviking.org] On Behalf Of Kevin Futter
Sent: Wednesday, 30 April 2008 4:15 a.m.
To: FX.php Discussion List
Subject: Re: [FX.php List] Security Question

On 25/04/08 8:21 AM, "Jonathan Schwartz" <jschwartz at exit445.com> wrote:

> Hi Folks,
> 
> I'm interested to know if folks store username, passwords and other
> sensitive data in the FX/server-data.php file. Or, do you relocate
> these "keys to the kingdom" to a remote location?  I have seen advise
> to keep the info out of the web server folder altogether.
> 
> Any advise?
> 
> J

I store them there, and haven't had any problems (that I know about), but
keeping them as far away from the end user as possible is always a good
idea. However, I'm not sure how you'd go about this and still have them
available to PHP, keeping in mind I'm no expert in PHP include paths.

In my case though, the credentials in server_data.php just grant access to
FM files; the nature and extent of that access is controlled by the files
themselves. For user authentication, we use Active Directory and LDAP
anyway, so that's not a FileMaker issue for us.

-- 
Kevin Futter
Webmaster, St. Bernard's College
http://www.sbc.melb.catholic.edu.au/


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