I just had to share a REALLY useful Open Source tool - Its called Vega ( http://subgraph.com/products.html ) I've had it running and in two minutes it found a lot of issues, potential security issues that is.
Integer overflows
Directory traversal, also known as "path traversal"
Command injection vulnerabilities
a possible SQL injection vulnerability
Also found medium security issues
XML injection vulnerability
I have to admit I need to do some research on some of these ( Vega gives you definitions and links to the issues it finds ), but I know that the SQL injection vulnerability is kind of serious. What's nice is, this program gives you a little help on fixing the issues it comes across. So for this SQL injection issue it had the follow suggestions...
REMEDIATION
- The developer should review the request and response against the code to manually verify whether or not a vulnerability is present.
- The best defense against SQL injection vulnerabilities is to use parameterized statements.
- Sanitizing input can prevent these vulnerabilities. Variables of string types should be filtered for escape characters, and numeric types should be checked to ensure that they are valid.
- Use of stored procedures can simplify complex queries and allow for tighter access control settings.
- Configuring database access controls can limit the impact of exploited vulnerabilities. This is a mitigating strategy that can be employed in environments where the code is not modifiable.
- Object-relational mapping eliminates the need for SQL.
Pretty nice huh? I have to admit a lot of this stuff is above and beyond me however this program does get me pointed in the right direction. Pretty much everything I do, when I come across an issue that exceeds my knowledge I camp out and live on various forums for days, searching and learning. Vega already, in the few moments I've been using it is speeding up the process.
I just thought others may find this tool helpful. If anything, when I do ask a question here; with the help of this program I can ask a more educated question. Its nice that the program links to web pages, wiki's and such to help explain the issues as well as the fixes. It doesn't explicitly give you Dolphin related answers/links, but addresses SQL, XML, PHP and so on.
Anyway - I like it so far, had to share. Hope y'all find it as helpful as I have so far. It's actually still scanning my site and still finding stuff. That said, expect a scan to take a while if you download this program and try it out. Its been at it for at least 20 mins so far. It appears to be extremely thorough - checking all the files in my Dolphin site directory,...down to the sub atomic level, which is ok by me. Before I go "LIVE" with my site I want to make sure its as secure as possible.
And no, I am not involved with this company! Just a huge supporter of Open Source stuff and I think this program has great potential, and could be extremely helpful/useful to everyone running a Dolphin site.