Re: Security Concern?

On Apr 21, 2008, at 8:03 AM, Jason Pruim wrote:

Hi Everyone, Last week you all helped me with the code to pull the database field names directly from the database rather then being hardcoded by me. Now I got to thinking, that I have exposed my database layout to anyone who can log in and see it. Is that a security issue? I've heard that if an attacker has the field names of a database, it makes it easier for them to try and inject code into it. All my queries to the database are done through prepared statements, and mysqli_real_escape_string. So I've taken care of at least part of it. I'm thinking that sense you have to log into the website to see the field names, it's okay as long as I trust and monitor my users. But I thought I would pose the question to people who are ALOT more knowledgeable then me :) Any comments are welcome, if you want to see source let me know and I can shoot you an e-mail off list (Don't really want to expose my code to all the archives just yet :))

As long as you're taking the necessary measures to ensure that your database is not breakable/hackable, then us knowing your schema shouldn't be an issue. I'd bet that one could guess part (or all?) of many people's database schemas b/c they're so generic - and it doesn't really matter to obfuscate them. I don't think it's as important to create obscure database schemas as it is protect how you interact with it. However, just make sure of the following, and you should be good: • Use mysql?_real_escape_string as you mentioned • Use backticks around ALL your table and field names: <?php $user_id = mysql_real_escape_string ($_GET['user_id']); $sql = "SELECT first_name, last_name FROM user WHERE (user_id = '$user_id')"; ?> With those simple precautions, you should be well-protected. HTH, ~Philip