RFC 31: Loading MapServer Objects from Strings

[Umberto Nicoletti]

It's hard to tell without looking at the specific piece of
code/functionality, but for a start we should sanitize all user input
by at least checking for strings length to avoid buffer overflows.

After that we should make sure that is is not possible to inject code
in the application by exploiting this or present functionality. The
code could be sql, javascript or even malware download links. The case
of malware is particularly problematic because it poses no threat to
the server itself, but it exploits the 'trust' the user has in the
server to trick into executing malicious code (like the recent youtube
attack http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzKmzO_Xq3k reported by websense
security labs).

There is probably much else to be done, but I can't think of it as of now.

Umberto

On 6/18/07, Daniel Morissette <dmorissette at mapgears.com> wrote:
> Umberto Nicoletti wrote:
> >
> > I don't like the idea of letting someone shoot himself in the foot by
> > turning on a 'feature': most users will just skip through the README
> > hunting for the text to cut and paste or are simply unable to
> > understand 'security'.
> >
>
> So what do you propose then?
>
> Daniel
> --
> Daniel Morissette
> http://www.mapgears.com/
>