A lion in a cage shouldn't be a danger - but release the lion from the cage and you could be at risk.

An include file that's pulled in by a PHP script shouldn't be a danger if it's used only from within that PHP script, but if it has its own URL the it could be released like the lion, and it could be a danger. If you're writing a PHP script that requires or includes files, please put the included files in a directory that's NOT got its own URL .... you can do it by giving a path to the file in the include or require statements, or by using the preconfigured directory that's set up on your PHP installation.


Image from Hone's Everyday Book
(written 2006-11-10, updated 2006-11-12)

 H117 - Security in PHP
  [4642] A small teaching program - demonstration of principles only - (2016-02-08)
  [3813] Injection Attacks - PHP, SQL, HTML, Javascript - and how to neutralise them - (2012-07-22)
  [3747] An easy way to comply with the new cookie law if your site is well designed - (2012-06-02)
  [3698] How to stop forms on other sites submitting to your scripts - (2012-04-15)
  [3210] Catchable fatal error in PHP ... How to catch, and alternative solutions such as JSON - (2011-03-22)
  [2939] Protecting your images from use out of context - (2010-08-29)
  [2688] Security considerations in programming - what do we teach? - (2010-03-22)
  [2628] An example of an injection attack using Javascript - (2010-02-08)
  [2025] Injection Attack if register_globals in on - PHP - (2009-02-04)
  [1779] Injection Attacks - avoiding them in your PHP - (2008-08-31)
  [1747] Who is watching you? - (2008-08-10)
  [1694] Defensive coding techniques in PHP? - (2008-07-02)
  [1679] PHP - Sanitised application principles for security and useability - (2008-06-16)
  [1542] Are nasty programs looking for security holes on your server? - (2008-02-17)
  [1482] A story about benchmarking PHP - (2007-12-23)
  [1396] Using PHP to upload images / Store on MySQL database - security questions - (2007-10-19)
  [1387] Error logging to file not browser in PHP - (2007-10-11)
  [1323] Easy handling of errors in PHP - (2007-08-27)
  [1086] Injection attacks - safeguard your PHP scripts - (2007-02-20)
  [1052] Learning to write secure, maintainable PHP - (2007-01-25)
  [947] What is an SQL injection attack? - (2006-11-27)
  [426] Robust checking of data entered by users - (2005-08-27)
  [345] Spotting a denial of service attack - (2005-06-12)

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A lion in a cage - PHP
Freedom for X is denial of privacy for Y
Databases needn't be frightening, hard or expensive
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