Home/ Questions/Q 640875
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-13T21:00:05+00:00

The script below, test.php, is intended to be placed in a specific directory of

  • 0

The script below, test.php, is intended to be placed in a specific directory of all my wordpress sites. Its purpose is to grab the file at the $source address below and extract it to the directory in which it resides. That’s all its intended to do.

For example, I will have a dashboard interface on my central server that lists all my sites in which this script is present. I will then execute a cURL routine that iterates over every site and performs a call on this script, effectively sending the update file to all of them at once.

The call is made like so…

...processing site 1 update...
http://targetsite1.com/somedeepdirectory/test.php?query=updates.zip

...processing site 2 update...
http://targetsite2.com/somedeepdirectory/test.php?query=updates.zip

...etc until all my sites have been updated.

My question is (1) how secure (hardened) is this script, as is. and (2) what checks should I put in place to make more so…

I’m thinking that at a minimum I would restrict the character count for myquery as well as check the payload in myquery for malicious, unexpected filetypes?

<?php

// TEST.PHP

$source = 'http://mycentralserver.com/protected/'.$_GET['myquery'];
$target = '.';

$out_file = fopen(basename($source), 'w');
$in_file = fopen($source, 'r');
while ($chunk = fgets($in_file)) {
    fputs($out_file, $chunk);
}
fclose($in_file);
fclose($out_file);

$zip = new ZipArchive();
$result = $zip->open(basename($source));
if ($result) {
    $zip->extractTo($target);
    $zip->close();
}

?>
Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The security of this script in its current state is pretty good. I do have a few concerns. Under NO CONDITION must you accidentally download a .php file and store it in your web root. This is the worst thing that could happen for this script as it would be a remote code execution vulnerability. Files should be downloaded into a specific directory, if you are concerned with other accessing this file you should do a “deny from all” in a .htaccess in that folder. If there are any errors in this script you should delete the downloaded file. In fact I recommend deleting the downloaded files asap.

    My concern is that the script should error gracefully. You should check to make sure that you have obtained what you are looking for. Even if the file isn’t a .php file it can contain php code <?php ?> which then could be include()’ed which would turn a Local File Include (LFI) vulnerability into full blown remote code execution.

    In a secure php configuration allow_url_fopen should be OFF and PhpInfoSec agrees with me. This means that fopen() cannot be used for HTTP. allow_url_fopen is enabled by default and I disable it on all production systems. The reason why is because I have personally written a remote code execution exploit in Coppermine Photo gallery that took advantage of this insecure default. CURL should ALWAYS be used for HTTP in PHP, it is more secure and more stable.

    • 0