Bug #62577 [Com]: simplexml_load_file does not file if libxml_disable_entity_loader(true)

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=62577&edit=1 ID: 62577 Comment by: phofstetter at sensational dot ch Reported by: ivan dot enderlin at hoa-project dot net Summary: simplexml_load_file does not file if libxml_disable_entity_loader(true) Status: Open Type: Bug Package: SimpleXML related Operating System: All PHP Version: master-Git-2012-07-16 (Git) Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: > and if you don't give valid path, you get an error and false. of course. But this bug is about simplexml_load_file failing on *any* valid path if libxml_disable_entity_loader(true) has been called. Here's a test script. IMHO, both assert()s should pass: <?php file_put_contents('/tmp/test.xml', '<doc><foo>bar</foo></doc>'); libxml_disable_entity_loader(false); assert(simplexml_load_file('/tmp/test.xml')->foo == 'bar'); libxml_disable_entity_loader(true); assert(simplexml_load_file('/tmp/test.xml')->foo == 'bar'); unlink('/tmp/test.xml'); Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2018-05-22 09:34:19] cojubacaso at stelliteop dot info I don't see how this is a bug, the function is called "simplexml_load_file", so the expected behavior is that it will load content of a file, and if you don't give valid path, you get an error and false. It is also documented like that, so please just close this, changing this behavior will probably brake a lot of applications also. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2016-10-17 13:32:58] cmb@php.net Related To: Bug #73328 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2016-10-03 20:22:58] gudang at gmail dot com @rrichards When are you going to fix this 4 years issue? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2014-01-29 13:03:29] phofstetter at sensational dot ch This bug causes libxml_disable_entity_loader(true); to also disable SoapClient - likely for the same reason. Contrary to the other options, this one is bad though because there's no workaround (asides of not using PHP's own SoapClient). So as it stands now users either have to live with an annoying security hole when parsing untrusted XML (which does happen at times) or with a defunct SOAP client plus the nice fopen wrappers not working for all XML related functions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2014-01-27 16:44:20] phofstetter at sensational dot ch External entity loading in XML is problematic security-wise (see https://www.owasp.org/index.php/XML_External_Entity_(XXE)_Processing and for example http://www.ubercomp.com/posts/2014-01-16_facebook_remote_code_execution where Facebook was hit by that). It's generally advised to turn off external entity loading. But because of this bug, turning that off also turns off *all* external file loading via libxml. What we need IMHO is something that turns off loading files in response to parsing untrusted XML. Requesting XML from an external source in itself isn't a problem. If this current behaviour is intended, please consider adding a note to the documentation explaining the case and telling users to use fopen (though that means that it's no longer possible to work with a huge stream of XML data because libxml_disable_entity_loader() also disables XmlReader::open() ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The remainder of the comments for this report are too long. To view the rest of the comments, please view the bug report online at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=62577 -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=62577&edit=1