Re: Nasty DoS in PHP | Windows only?

Just catching up on my emails and saw this thread. Just a note that it didn't happen under FreeBSD 4.5-R p3 PHP 4.1.2 (Apache module) 386M Ram, PIII 450 box The script died after the max_time setting, and apache's children returned back to their happy go lucky nature all by themselves... Billy S Halsey wrote:

Actually, it occurs on Solaris as well. I just coded up the script, and it brought my server to its knees, though I was able to break it before it hanged hard. My configuration: * Solaris 8 108528-12 * PHP 4.1.1 as an executable (didn't try through Apache) * 512mb ram, 1 @ 440MHx UltraSPARC IIi My php.ini specifies: * max_execution_time = 120 * memory_limit = 128M Yet, I let the script run for a while (over two minutes) and it had managed to consume 80% of my cpu time and over one gig of virtual memory (phys + swap)! It should be noted that while this is indeed a "very bad thing," the following snippet of C code is just as bad, yet it's not technically a bug -- just bad programming: int main(void) { void *p; while (1)

      p = malloc(1024);

/*NOTREACHED*/ return 0; } /bsh/ Jason Murray wrote:

I'd be interested in knowing your versions and the versions of the first guy that posted about this. Maybe he has the same setup as me, or close enough, but both of us are different from you.

Actually, I just thought about it - maybe you guys are both running it on Windows (shame on you ;)). I *have* actually seen PHP bring down IIS with a setcookie command. Since a setcookie issues headers, I thought "fine, screw you, I'll set the headers myself", and it STILL brought IIS down. And indeed, the load *did* skyrocket and require a reboot of the server. I asked around here at the time if anyone had experienced this (look through the mailing list archive to find it) and at the time got more of a congratulatory salute from the list members than any real responses :) Maybe this is more of a PHP-on-IIS issue than an actual security issue in PHP. Jason