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phpcs-security-audit is a set of PHP_CodeSniffer rules that finds vulnerabilities and weaknesses related to security in PHP code
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Languages: PHP, Dockerfile
phpcs-security-audit is a set of PHP_CodeSniffer rules that finds vulnerabilities and weaknesses related to security in PHP code.
It currently has core PHP rules as well as Drupal 7 specific rules.
The tool also checks for CVE issues and security advisories related to the CMS/framework. This enables you to follow the versioning of components during static code analysis.
The main reason for this project being an extension of PHP_CodeSniffer is to have easy integration into continuous integration systems. It also allows for finding security bugs that are not detected with some object oriented analysis (such as PHPMD).
phpcs-security-audit in its beginning was backed by Pheromone (later on named Floe Design + Technologies) and written by Jonathan Marcil.
Requires PHP CodeSniffer version 3.1.0 or higher with PHP 5.4 or higher.
The easiest way to install is using Composer:
#WARNING: this currently doesn't work up until the v3 package is released
#See Contribute section bellow for git clone instruction
composer require --dev pheromone/phpcs-security-audit
This will also install the DealerDirect Composer PHPCS plugin which will register the Security
standard with PHP_CodeSniffer.
Now run:
./vendor/bin/phpcs -i
If all went right, you should see Security
listed in the list of installed coding standards.
If you want to integrate it all with Jenkins, go see http://jenkins-php.org/ for extensive help.
Simply set the standard to Security
or point to any XML ruleset file and to a folder to scan:
phpcs --extensions=php,inc,lib,module,info --standard=./vendor/pheromone/phpcs-security-audit/example_base_ruleset.xml /your/php/files/
Specifying extensions is important since, for example, PHP code is within .module
files in Drupal.
To have a quick example of output you can use the provided tests.php
file:
$ phpcs --extensions=php,inc,lib,module,info --standard=./vendor/pheromone/phpcs-security-audit/example_base_ruleset.xml ./vendor/pheromone/phpcs-security-audit/tests.php
FILE: tests.php
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOUND 18 ERRORS AND 36 WARNINGS AFFECTING 44 LINES
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6 | WARNING | Possible XSS detected with . on echo
6 | ERROR | Easy XSS detected because of direct user input with $_POST on echo
9 | WARNING | Usage of preg_replace with /e modifier is not recommended.
10 | WARNING | Usage of preg_replace with /e modifier is not recommended.
10 | ERROR | User input and /e modifier found in preg_replace, remote code execution possible.
11 | ERROR | User input found in preg_replace, /e modifier could be used for malicious intent.
...
For the Drupal AdvisoriesContrib you need to change your /etc/php5/cli/php.ini
to have:
short_open_tag = On
in order to get rid of "No PHP code was found in this file" warnings.
Please note that only Drupal modules downloaded from drupal.org are supported. If you are using contrib module but from another source, the version checking probably won't work and will generate a warning.
As with the normal PHP CodeSniffer rules, customization is provided in the XML files that are in the top folder of the project.
These global parameters are used in many rules:
They can be set in a custom ruleset XML file (such as example_drupal7_ruleset.xml
), from the command line for permanent config with --config-set
or at runtime with --runtime-set
. Note that the XML overrides all CLI options so remove it if you want to use it. The CLI usage is as follows:
phpcs --runtime-set ParanoiaMode 0 --extensions=php --standard=./vendor/pheromone/phpcs-security-audit/example_base_ruleset.xml tests.php
For some rules, you can force the paranoia mode on or off with the parameter forceParanoia
inside the XML file.
It is possible to install with a git clone
and play with it in the same folder.
composer install
./vendor/bin/phpcs --standard=example_base_ruleset.xml --extensions=php tests.php
By default it should set PHPCS to look in the current folder:
PHP CodeSniffer Config installed_paths set to ../../../
If for any reason you need to change this (should work out of the box) you will need to phpcs --config-set installed_paths
as explained in PHP_CodeSniffer docs.
Master can contain breaking changes, so people are better off relying on releases for stable versions.
Those release packages are available here on GitHub or on Packagist.
Some guidelines if you want to create new rules::
ParanoiaMode
controls how verbose your sniff is:
paranoia=true
only.paranoia=false
.paranoia=false
should solve false positive, otherwise warn on anything remotely suspicious.tests.php
.
example_base_ruleset.xml
and example_drupal7_ruleset.xml
when it applies.If you want to support a specific code base or framework beyond XML configuration, you can use the utilities provided by phpcs-security-audit to facilitate the process.
Let's say you have a custom CMS function that is taking user input from $_GET
when a function call to get_param()
is done.
You have to create a new Folder in Sniffs/
that will be the name of your framework. Then you'll need
to create a file named Utils.php
that will actually be the function that will specialise the generic sniffs. To guide you, just copy the file from another folder such as Drupal7/
.
The main function you'll want to change is is_direct_user_input
where you'll want to return TRUE when get_param()
is seen:
public static function is_direct_user_input($var) {
if (parent::is_direct_user_input($var)) {
return TRUE;
} else {
if ($var == 'get_param') {
return TRUE;
}
}
return FALSE;
}
Don't forget to set the occurrence of param "CmsFramework" in your XML base configuration in order to select your newly added utilities.
You are not required to do your own sniffs for the modification to be useful, since you are specifying what is a user input for other rules, but you could use the newly created directory to do so.
In the same fashion, you can also reduce the number of false positive by adding mitigation functions. Those are functions that serve as security controls (either explicitly in the function or by a side effect) that lower the risks. A good example is htmlentities
for XSS. See is_XSS_mitigation
function in Drupal7/Utils.php
.
If you implement any public CMS/Framework customization please make a pull request to help the project grows.
The tool now support unit testing with composer test
.
To test for a specific sniff, use composer test -- --filter RULENAME
(without the Sniff
part).
To create a test, create a folder with RULENAME. Inside, have a RULENAMEUnitTest.inc
file for the code to be scanned and RULENAMEUnitTest.php
file for the PHPCS validation of findings. For the rule to support a given CMS/Framework, it needs to have a inc file with the following: RULENAMEUnitTest.CMSFRAMEWORK.inc
. See Security/Tests/BadFunctions
for a complete example.
As with any security tool, this one comes with it's share of annoyance. At first a focus on finding vulnerabilities will be done, but later it is planned to have a phase where efforts will be towards reducing annoyances, in particular with the number of false positives.
ParanoiaMode
to 0
for a major cut-off on warnings.cli/php.ini
to use 512M if needed) to run. Not sure if it's because of bugs in PHPCS or this set of rules, but will be investigated last. Meanwhile you can configure PHPCS to ignore big contrib modules (and run another instance of PHPCS for .info
parsing only for them). An example is og taking hours, usually everything runs under 1-2 minutes and sometimes around 5 minute. You can try using the --parallel=8
(or another number) option to try and speed things up on supported OSes. Possible work-around is to use phpcs --ignore=folder
to skip scanning of those parts.