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Date: Mon, 7 May 2012 01:31:00 -0700
Message-ID: <CAKOpQSyrL_yVqEoxxpN+sWcQ9H6JjRQncpRnnG4BedjMRxrUqw@mail.gmail.com>
To: Arvids Godjuks <arvids.godjuks@gmail.com>
Cc: Tjerk Anne Meesters <datibbaw@php.net>, PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>, 
	Richard Lynch <ceo@l-i-e.com>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=0016e6d59ec6040b0404bf6e17d9
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [off] PHP: a fractal of bad design
From: kris.craig@gmail.com (Kris Craig)

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On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 12:28 AM, Arvids Godjuks <arvids.godjuks@gmail.com>w=
rote:

> Hello internals,
>
> I should voice my opinion that such things like comparing two strings
> starting with numbers and that they resolve to actual integer/float for
> comparation is bad, really bad. That just defies the logic and yealds
> absolutly unexpected results. I pride myself that i know the juggling rul=
es
> well, but I'm shocked by this to say the least...
> In my opinion this should change no matter the BC breaks it will create,
> this one affects security big time. It's good I actually hash my password=
s
> in the MySQL and not on the PHP side, but I have seen hash comparations
> with =3D=3D all the time. And now that this has been discussed in detail =
I
> expect this to be used as an attack method grow wide.
> 07.05.2012 5:32 =D0=CF=CC=D8=DA=CF=D7=C1=D4=C5=CC=D8 "Tjerk Anne Meesters=
" <datibbaw@php.net>
> =CE=C1=D0=C9=D3=C1=CC:


Forgive me if I'm missing something, but why are people using =3D=3D for
security-sensitive string comparisons (like hashed passwords) in the first
place?!  If you needs something that's safe, isn't that what strcmp() and
strcasecmp() are for?  For my part, I pretty much never use =3D=3D on strin=
g
comparison, though admittedly that's probably just a matter of having
having come from a C background before PHP.

That being said, I agree that this *definitely* should be fixed if the
examples cited are indeed accurate (I've been working with PHP for over 10
years and I was never aware of this bizarre behavior, either).  I don't
know the history of this, but I at least would consider it to be a bug.  A
rather large one, in fact; though I think some of the fears expressed are a
bit hyperbolic.  And if you're fixing a serious bug or security
vulnerability, as a general rule of thumb, this automatically supercedes
any concerns regarding BC breakage IMHO.  But if that really is a lingering
concern, I'd suggest targetting the fix for PHP 6, since people would (or
at least should) expect that some PHP 5 code may behave differently in PHP
6 anyway given that it's a major release

--Kris

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