Hi,

This is an interesting question (in my humble opinion).

I am trying to create a forum in PHP. So there is a "Post a new Thread" link, clicking on which would open a textarea field for posting a message and a textbox for the "title".

Now, I dont want ppl to sql inject queries through the textarea or the textbox field.

So I have created this function for the same.

function dbsafe($data){
$data = str_replace('select','',$data);
$data = str_replace('alter','',$data);
$data = str_replace('delete','',$data);
$data = str_replace('replace','',$data);
return $data;
}

Now, though the above function would secure my db upto some extent but the only limitation I can see is my members/visitors will not be able to use the words "select","alter","delete","replace" in their threads even though they want use them (not for sql injection purpose).


So, I had to change my dbsafe function to the following:

function dbsafe($data){
$data = str_replace('tbl_members','',$data);
$data = str_replace('tbl_login','',$data);
$data = str_replace('tbl_details','',$data);
$data = str_replace('tbl_orders','',$data);
return $data;
}

ok, so now my function would now replace my database tables if the attacker intends to destroy or misuse them using any sql statements.

Now my question is that:

1) Which one of the above 2 functions is better you think?
2) Also, in my second function, is there a way the attacker would hamper my database without using my table names?


Please guide and help.

Need your opinion


Thanx so much in advance

why not try to use mysql_real_escape_string function?

here I have made one:

function antiinject($var)
{
	if (get_magic_quotes_gpc())
		{
			$var1=stripslashes($var);
		}
	else
		{
			$var1=$var;
		}
	return mysql_real_escape_string($var1);
}

Hope this helps.

what does your function do?

Plz explain

See this , Example 2.

About your 2 functions,I think the 2nd function is better,but the attacker can destroy not just your tables but the whole database itself:

drop database [database name];

stripslashes Un-quotes a quoted string that is used in SQl statements therefore escaping all quotes making the injection useless.

the function checks if get_magic_quotes_gpc is on to prevent double escaping of quotes.

Thanx ryan for the detailed explanation. Appreciate it.

So you think both the functions "get_magic_quotes_gpc" and "mysql_real_escape_string" are being used in all professional forums to prevent injections?

The way to look at injection protection is not to "take the bad things out" but to "only let the good things in". There is, funnily enough, a big difference.

Properly quoting the input text to make it impotent is a reasonable strategy in this case, since you're accepting a wide range of legal input characters; but for a web forum also consider sanitising HTML markup in any uploaded data: since you don't want anonymous people posting working Javscript onto your hosted pages. It's not a risk to your server, or even user's machines -- but it can be used to steal online identities.

As for the professional forum software, most are open source so you could have a look at how they do it. It's a good bet they use either the builtin PHP string escape methods as ryan suggested; or regular expression based sanitisers; or state-based parsers as sanitisers.

Sanitising using stringwide-replace operations as you suggested in the original two examples is not even marginally safe. Consider this input ( to your first sanitiser ): del[b]delete[/b]ete * from * Your code will replace the highlighted instance of delete, creating a new delete as it does so, which will be subsequently un-noticed ( since that's how replace works ). Yay!

why not try to use mysql_real_escape_string function?

here I have made one:

function antiinject($var)
{
	if (get_magic_quotes_gpc())
		{
			$var1=stripslashes($var);
		}
	else
		{
			$var1=$var;
		}
	return mysql_real_escape_string($var1);
}

Hope this helps.

Will this function prevent my users to insert php tags into the db?

Like <?php phpingo();?> etc?

mysql_real_escape_string is used for SQL statements only.

Here,I have made a function to delete these tags.

function deletephptags($var)
{
//$b get the text after the <?php tag..
list($a,$b)=explode("<?php",$var);
//$c get the text after <?php and before  the ending tag..
list($c,$d)=explode("?>",$b);
//deletes the php tags and functions inside them..
$data=str_replace($c,'',$var);
//return the new string....
return $data;
}

Enjoy!

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