Security Risk Having Mbstring And Mysqli Installed On Your Server
Mar 20, 2008
A friend of mine owns a hosting company and a client of his asked to have mbstring and mysqli installed. What he wants to know is , is there any security risks if he does install that on his server?
Also, he wants to know, if there is not, what how does he go about installing that on the server?
There are always people who would like to know what the php settings are on the server. Is it a security risk to share the phpinfo.php file on a website, with anybody who visits that website, able to view it?
If you have CSF installed, under its WHM section there is a quick security 'scan' you can run - just wondering what score you have?
I know it's not an infallible test, but the scan does test for some potentially large weaknesses hence why I'm asking here (mainly out of curiosity) what sort of scores people have.
Mine is 103/112 - the rest of the points were mainly for features I didn't want enabled for particular reasons (i.e. one of the recommendations is to force all cPanel visits to be through SSL, a feature which some clients don't want) plus sometimes it says I've got features enabled which are disabled, etc.
I just started using FileZilla Client, as a way of allowing business clients to upload to an ftp account at my website (the ftp account is a subdirectory of my public_html directory, and has its own username and password).
I noticed that, along with other information for each file listed at that subdirectory, FileZilla also posts info on "owner" and "group". It turns out that, for each of these fields, FileZilla displays the username of my entire site -- not the username specifically associated with the particular ftp account to which FileZilla had connected. Thankfully, it doesn't also display the password that goes along with it!
I'm wondering if anyone would know:
- does this constitute a significant security risk? - is this because of actions on the part of my web host, or because of FileZilla's programming? (ie, would the same thing occur in all ftp clients?) - if this is a significant security risk, would there be any workaround?
I just recompiled PHP 5 with MySqli in cPanel and Mysqli is working fine under Apache, but it doesn't work under lighttpd. I can see the MySqli module in phpinfo when I run it under Apache, but there's no MySqli module when I run it under lighttpd. So how can I fix it to use MySqli with lighttpd?
1. GD libraryNot installed The GD library for PHP is missing or outdated. Please check the PHP image documentation for information on how to correct this.
2. Unicode libraryStandard PHP Operations on Unicode strings are emulated on a best-effort basis. Install the PHP mbstring extension for improved Unicode support.
I have on my server:
Package gd-2.0.33-9.4.el5_1.1.x86_64 already installed and latest version Package gd-2.0.33-9.4.el5_1.1.i386 already installed and latest version
but i don`t know why drupal say to me it`s not installed. Need to active the GD Library?
How can i fix the problem with php mbstring and GD Library?
I'm using Apache2, MySQL5, and PHP5 with CentOS4.6, cPanel 11.
When recompile Apache2 and PHP5 from WHM, there are no options for mbstring, so now my PHP5 doesn't has mbstring.
I tried to install mbstring as below, but I got this message:
Quote:
root@mybox [~]# yum install php-mbstring Setting up Install Process Setting up repositories update 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00 base 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00 addons 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00 extras 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00 Reading repository metadata in from local files Excluding Packages in global exclude list Finished Parsing package install arguments No Match for argument: php-mbstring Nothing to do
I also tried:
Quote:
up2date -i php-mbstring
Are there other ways to install mbstring for PHP5?
Unlimited addon domain. Unlimited Mysql databases. No setup fees. About 600Mb webspase About 2000-3000 trafic Cheap as posible If posible (but not necesary) multiple IP's. Payment from PayPal but if it's necesarry then it's Moneybookers ok to. Prefer monthly payments.
It is currently with company A who charge quite a lot to keep it there. I want to move it to company B who are my hosts and with whom I get 1 free domain name.
One added complication is that the domain is in a friends name, but I have logon and can change name to my own any time I want.
Company B said "After it is on our registrar, you will be the only one that can renew it as long as it doesn't expire for longer than 90 days."
This has me worried that because I haven't renewed it withing 90 days that it can be stolen from me. Have I misunderstood or is this a risk?
If so would I be better advised to renew it in my friends name wth company A?
I'm a Windows guy and can little or nothing about Linux. How big risk do I take if I'm using a Linux VPS and never update/patch the kernel?
I'm using CentOS 5 and LxAdmin. I can update the control panel, but I can not update/patch the kernel since I have no knowledge how I do that.
I'm using a unmanaged plan, so no help there.
Some of my sites are running Wordpress, but I'm always using the lates WP installation. I not using any other plugins that WG2, Gallery2, and remove max width.
Nobody except me have access to the VPS, and I have no other FTP accounts or something like that on the VPS.
I have no other scripts or any kind of dynamic pages on my VPS.
What kind of risk do I have here?
I'm currently having plans to cancel my second VPS that's using Win2003, and only use Linux in the future. I can cut my monthly expensive with 50% that way, but do I take a big risk doing it that way?
At present I run SSH on a different port then normal to protect root. This has worked for two years, but with discovering that cPanel finally support SFTP without shell access needed, I want to finally turn off FTP and require SFTP. The problem is the port I am using. Since it's a random port I have been secured against root attacks (well nothing has shown up). I am with LiquidWeb which is fully managed. So I guess they take care of allot of prevention.
This is what I am thinking of doing. move SSH back to port 22 (I only host a few friends sites and want to be hosting 20 accounts by end of year to cover my costs). Then disabled root password and require SSH keys. Would this be strong as secure as running SSH on a high #port or am I fooling myself.
I could also add in for good measure restricting root SSH/SFTP (yes I prefer SFTP for file management as I am legally blind and using Transmit+BBEdit is allot easier for me for editing files). The problem with restricting to certain IP's, is that Shaw charges $30/month more for a static IP and I also am at my moms 25% of the time (and she is also with Shaw). I think the XXXX.vs.shawcable.net is static but I am not 100% sure.
I really do want to kill FTP so that only port 80 is the only non SSL port open.
configure: error: Cannot find MySQL header files under /usr/local/webserver/mysql. Note that the MySQL client library is not bundled anymore!
Because mysql installed on another physical server. so how may I fix the problem? can I configure php without "---with-mysql" and "--with-mysqli" parameters? I need my php could access remote mysql server.
I have a Windows Server 2003 package installed on a server. I own a number of websites that are being hosted some place else. How do I get my websites set-up to run on my new server?