ID: 13843
User updated by: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reported By: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Old Summary: Command line arguments escaped magically and out of control
Status: Open
Bug Type: Program Execution
Operating System: Unix
PHP Version: 4.0.6
New Comment:
Rats! I meant to say "to standard out" in the last sentence.
Previous Comments:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2001-10-29 16:23:58] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Rasmus, what you are saying about shell redirection being a threat under safe mode
makes sesnse. But how about being able to pass parameters with spaces in them? I
cannot see any security implication in that...
In any case, I want to be able to read standard error from the command I'm
executing...
How about providing a PHP variant of C's execv() in PHP, so that I could pass it an
array of parameters? And, perhaps, add a flag to existing program execution functions
to duplicate standard error to standard in.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2001-10-29 16:14:34] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I forgot to add that it appears that this bug is not Solaris-specific, but, rather,
safe mode specific.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2001-10-29 16:14:31] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Well, not being able to use shell redirection and command line args in safe-mode makes
a lot of sense. You could trivially circumvent the safe-mode restrictions if you were
allowed to do this. Basically safe-mode only allows system calls to very limited
things. Basically prepared scripts placed in the safe-mode-exec-dir. I don't see how
we could allow arguments and redirects and still maintain the point behind safe-mode.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2001-10-29 16:09:44] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I've looked into this further, and here's the scoop. Under safe mode, php uses
php_escape_shell_cmd() function to escape any command passed to program execution
functions. As a result, if I pass a command like this:
/www/bin/foo "bar c" 2>&1
it will turn it into
/www/bin/foo \"bar c\" 2\>\&1
I, as a PHP developer, have no control over this under safe mode. Among other things,
this means that I cannot pass my program an argument, containing spaces, nor can I use
shell redirection machinery.
I propose a patch like below to inhibit this automatic escaping.
diff -rc php-4.0.6-orig/ext/standard/exec.c php-4.0.6/ext/standard/exec.c
*** php-4.0.6-orig/ext/standard/exec.c Mon Apr 30 08:43:39 2001
--- php-4.0.6/ext/standard/exec.c Mon Oct 29 15:31:06 2001
***************
*** 92,100 ****
*c = ' ';
strncat(d, c, overflow_limit);
}
- tmp = php_escape_shell_cmd(d);
- efree(d);
- d = tmp;
#if PHP_SIGCHILD
sig_handler = signal (SIGCHLD, SIG_DFL);
#endif
--- 92,97 ----
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2001-10-26 21:29:47] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
4.0.6 (safe mode), Apache 1.3.20, running as server module, under Solaris 8/Sparc
When passing arguments to an executable with either exec(), system() or passthru(),
special shell characters are escaped automatically, and I have no control over it. As
a result, I am unable to pass to the executable a paramter containing white space
(such as a file name with spaces), because I cannot surround it with quotes or
backslash the spaces (the automatic escaping protects the quotes or backslash from the
shell).
Another consequence is that I cannot use shell redirection symbols (e.g. 2>&1): they
get escaped, too, and the executable receives the string "2>&1" as one of its
parameters.
If I use escapeshellarg() for each argument (as I should), the single quotes, put
arround the argument by that function, are passed over as part of the argument. For
example:
$arg = escapeshellarg("/var/www/data/foo bar.txt");
passthru( "/var/www/bin/myprog $arg" );
Produces the following output from myprog:
'/var/www/data/foo: No such file or directory
bar.txt': No such file or directory
I suspect that this bug may be specific to Solaris, since I could not reproduce the
same behaviour under identical configuration under FreeBSD.
Hoping for a fix in the upcoming release,
--
Arcady Genkin
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=13843&edit=1
--
PHP Development Mailing List <http://www.php.net/>
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
