PHP is a very powerful language for easily developing web applications however with this power comes great responsibility … and in this case that means not shooting yourself in the foot with lax security practices. Issues can arise from everything from language vulnerabilities and weak default settings to insecure coding practices and misconfigurations. This presentation plans to address many of these concerns by providing valuable lessons in the security of, attacks against, and management of PHP in your environment. The talk begins with an overview of PHP security, including it’s known issues and corresponding security enhancements the maintainers have incorporated over time. Beginning with an in-depth discussion of Suhosin and how it can be used to lock down your PHP environment, the presentation next details PHPIDS and how it can be used to detect PHP-centric threats. The talk closes with a strategy for analyzing the risks in your PHP environment and applying corresponding PHP and platform/network mitigations to minimize your attack surface.
Grecs has over 17 years experience, undergraduate and graduate degrees in Electrical Engineering, and a really well known security certification. Even though his training was in Electrical Engineering, Grecs has always been more of a Computer Science person at heart going back to his VIC-20, Commodore 64, and high school computer club days. After doing the IT grind for 5 years, he discovered his love of infosec and has been pursuing this career ever since. Currently, he spends his days doing cyber security paperwork drills in building and maintaining multi-billion dollar government systems. At night he runs a local infosec website and tries to get some hands-on skillz.