Suhosin is a Korean word which, roughly translated, means guardian angel. It is also the name of a clever PHP extension brought to us by the Hardened-PHP Project. When I found out it could provide transparent on-the-fly session and cookie encryption I thought sexual thoughts and sped off to install it. Fortunately for gentoo users, it’s a simple matter of adding the suhosin USE flag to PHP and (re)compiling:
# echo "dev-lang/php suhosin" >> /etc/portage/package.use
# emerge --newuse php
In fact, now is probably a good time to reevaluate your PHP USE flags; I tend to disable a bunch of functions that would simply not exist if certain extensions were not compiled in at all. This is what your stripped-down flags might look like:
[ebuild R ] dev-lang/php-5.2.13 USE="apache2 bcmath berkdb bzip2 cgi cli crypt ctype exif filter gd hash iconv ipv6 json mysql mysqli ncurses nls pcntl pcre pdo readline reflection session simplexml snmp spl ssl suhosin threads truetype unicode xml zip zlib -adabas -birdstep -calendar -cdb -cjk -concurrentmodphp -curl -curlwrappers -db2 -dbase -dbmaker -debug -discard-path -doc -empress -empress-bcs -esoob -fastbuild -fdftk -firebird -flatfile -force-cgi-redirect -frontbase -ftp -gd-external -gdbm -gmp -imap -inifile -interbase -iodbc (-java-external) -kerberos -kolab -ldap -ldap-sasl -libedit -mcve -mhash -msql -mssql -oci8 -oci8-instant-client -odbc -pic -posix -postgres -qdbm -recode -sapdb -sharedext -sharedmem -soap -sockets -solid -spell -sqlite -sybase -sybase-ct -sysvipc -tidy -tokenizer -wddx -xmlreader -xmlrpc -xmlwriter -xpm -xsl -yaz"
Once you’ve recompiled you’re going to have to add the Suhosin configuration directives to your php.ini. For apache open /etc/php/apache-php5/php.ini and tack this on to the end:
; Logging
suhosin.log.syslog = S_ALL
suhosin.log.syslog.facility = LOG_USER
suhosin.log.syslog.priority = LOG_WARNING
suhosin.log.sapi = S_ALL
;suhosin.log.script
;suhosin.log.phpscript
;suhosin.log.script.name
;suhosin.log.phpscript.name
;suhosin.log.use-x-forwarded-for
; Executor Options
suhosin.executor.max_depth = 1000000
suhosin.executor.include.max_traversal = 3
;suhosin.executor.include.whitelist
;suhosin.executor.include.blacklist
;suhosin.executor.func.whitelist
suhosin.executor.func.blacklist = ""
;suhosin.executor.eval.whitelist
suhosin.executor.eval.blacklist = ""
suhosin.executor.disable_eval = On
suhosin.executor.disable_emodifier = On
suhosin.executor.allow_symlink = Off
; Misc Options
suhosin.simulation = Off
suhosin.apc_bug_workaround = Off
suhosin.sql.bailout_on_error = On
;suhosin.sql.user_prefix
;suhosin.sql.user_postfix
suhosin.multiheader = On
suhosin.mail.protect = 2
;suhosin.memory_limit
; Transparent Encryption Options
suhosin.session.encrypt = On
suhosin.session.cryptkey = "INSERT RANDOM CRAP HERE"
suhosin.session.cryptua = On
suhosin.session.cryptdocroot = On
suhosin.session.cryptraddr = 2
suhosin.session.checkraddr = 2
suhosin.cookie.encrypt = On
suhosin.cookie.cryptkey = "INSERT RANDOM CRAP HERE"
suhosin.cookie.cryptua = On
suhosin.cookie.cryptdocroot = On
suhosin.cookie.cryptraddr = 2
suhosin.cookie.checkraddr = 2
;suhosin.cookie.cryptlist
;suhosin.cookie.plainlist
; Filtering Options
suhosin.filter.action = 402
suhosin.cookie.max_array_depth = 100
suhosin.cookie.max_array_index_length = 64
suhosin.cookie.max_name_length = 64
suhosin.cookie.max_totalname_length = 256
suhosin.cookie.max_value_length = 10000
suhosin.cookie.max_vars = 100
suhosin.cookie.disallow_nul = On
suhosin.get.max_array_depth = 50
suhosin.get.max_array_index_length = 64
suhosin.get.max_name_length = 64
suhosin.get.max_totalname_length = 256
suhosin.get.max_value_length = 512
suhosin.get.max_vars = 100
suhosin.get.disallow_nul = On
suhosin.post.max_array_depth = 100
suhosin.post.max_array_index_length = 64
suhosin.post.max_name_length = 64
suhosin.post.max_totalname_length = 256
suhosin.post.max_value_length = 50000000
suhosin.post.max_vars = 200
suhosin.post.disallow_nul = On
suhosin.request.max_array_depth = 100
suhosin.request.max_array_index_length = 64
suhosin.request.max_totalname_length = 256
suhosin.request.max_value_length = 65000
suhosin.request.max_vars = 200
suhosin.request.max_varname_length = 64
suhosin.request.disallow_nul = On
suhosin.upload.max_uploads = 25
suhosin.upload.disallow_elf = On
suhosin.upload.disallow_binary = Off
suhosin.upload.remove_binary = Off
;suhosin.upload.verification_script
suhosin.session.max_id_length = 128
Now head over to http://www.hardened-php.net/suhosin/configuration.html and tailor the configuration to suit your environment. Don’t forget to blacklist dangerous functions like apache_child_terminate, apache_setenv, define_syslog_variables, eval, exec, ftp_connect, ftp_exec, ftp_get, ftp_login, ftp_nb_fput, ftp_put, ftp_raw, ftp_rawlist, highlight_file, ini_alter, ini_get_all, ini_restore, inject_code, openlog, passthru, php_uname, phpAds_remoteInfo, phpAds_XmlRpc, phpAds_xmlrpcDecode, phpAds_xmlrpcEncode, popen, posix_getpwuid, posix_kill, posix_mkfifo, posix_setpgid, posix_setsid, posix_setuid, posix_setuid, posix_uname, proc_close, proc_get_status, proc_nice, proc_open, proc_terminate, shell_exec, syslog, system, xmlrpc_entity_decode, exec, pipe, set_time_limit, popen, proc_open, parse_ini_file, show_source, mail, dl, ini_set, ini_alter, virtual, openlog, apc_add, apc_bin_dump, apc_bin_dumpfile, apc_bin_loadfile, apc_cache_info, apc_cas, apc_clear_cache, apc_compile_file, apc_dec, apc_define_constants, apc_delete_file, apc_delete, apc_exists, apc_fetch, apc_inc, apc_load_constants, apc_store, symlink and eval!
It seems Suhosin provides its own stack-smashing protection, potentially removing the need for the slow PIC (-fstack_protector_all) compile-time option. Until I get confirmation on this I’ll be using both just to be safe.
