Re: Proposal: Establish DB connections during module_init

Hi Manuel! On Thu, 08 Jun 2000, Manuel Lemos wrote: > >I'd say httpd.conf is a lot of safer place to put cleartext passwords than > >anywhere in PHP code. Apache usually starts as root privileges, reads > >httpd.conf, starts forking children, and only the children change their > >uid/gid to something unprivileged. So, httpd.conf can have the privileges > > I guess I am not explaining my point clear. Given that there is no 100% > secure system, security level may be defined as the amount of time that > an hacker takes to cause harm to the system. Once inside of a system, an > hacker looks for informations in predictable places. > > Once an hacker knows that site is served by PHP, he'll look for database > passwords first in the most obvious places. If this feature is deployed as > proposed, httpd.conf becomes the most obvious place to start the search. If > the password is there, the search is over and the site is hacked faster, > so the security level is effectively lower. But, if I set my httpd.conf to 0.0/600 and you manage to read it, it means you already have root access, so what else do you need the DB passwords for? > > Of course the developer may not provide a password in httpd.conf, but that > way he may not benefit of the startup speed increase. > > I believe that Zeev's suggestion of letting the process startup code be > defined in PHP somewhere else is a little better, but not much more though. sure, the "secret file" must be declared somewhere, maybe a build it path specified at the compile time ? though a "strings libphp4.so" would show it too. -- teodor