|  | Posted by Sebastian Lisken on 01/18/08 16:05 
Thanks a lot for your response. I have a few questions/remarks ...
 R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah <ng4rrjanbiah@rediffmail.com> wrote:
 > 1. mysql_real_escape_string() is again broken. Use prepare statements
 
 That sounds like something I should look into. Could you explain or
 point to some source on the web? I'd want to know in what sense it is
 broken, and although I glanced over PREPARE in the MySQL manual I can't
 yet see how that would resolve things. PREPARE seems to be SQL (unless
 you are referring to http://www.php.net/pdo-prepare) so I would still
 be wondering how to get my string from PHP over to SQL.
 
 > 2. Disable trans sid--always use cookies based session
 
 Yes. I'm not relying on trans sid anyway (there's a lengthy dispute
 about that in this thread) but using "manual" insertion of SID to get
 the same behaviour. As it happens, the option is off on the server. I
 think the message is not about use_trans_sid versus SID, it's independent
 of that and more fundamental: require cookies, don't let session IDs
 show up in URLs. I agree in principle. Whether it needs to be put into
 practice for this site is a matter I need to discuss with my client. They
 will need to balance security with compatibility.
 
 > 3. Possibly use DB based session handler
 
 The security requirements are probably not high enough for that (and the
 budget not available), but it's something I'll keep in mind.
 
 > 4. Some versions of PHP has XSS issues with $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']. So,
 > use $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']
 
 When I did my research I realised I couldn't trust PHP_SELF, so I'm
 always escaping it (using htmlentities in the most frequent application,
 where PHP_SELF is used for a href value possibly followed by URL
 parameters). Using SCRIPT_NAME would be another solution, I agree.
 
 > 5. Session Ids can be "fixed". So, if you're concerned use DB based
 > sessions and use session_regenerate_id()
 
 I am introducing session_regenerate_id.
 
 Sebastian
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