Author: Guillaume Plessis

On December 17th 2009, the PHP Group released PHP 5.2.12 :

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.12. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.2.x branch with over 60 bug fixes, some of which are security related. All users of PHP 5.2 are encouraged to upgrade to this release.

Security Enhancements and Fixes in PHP 5.2.12:

• Fixed a safe_mode bypass in tempnam() identified by Grzegorz Stachowiak. (CVE-2009-3557, Rasmus)
• Fixed a open_basedir bypass in posix_mkfifo() identified by Grzegorz Stachowiak. (CVE-2009-3558, Rasmus)
• Added “max_file_uploads” INI directive, which can be set to limit the number of file uploads per-request to 20 by default, to prevent possible DOS via temporary file exhaustion, identified by Bogdan Calin. (CVE-2009-4017, Ilia)
• Added protection for $_SESSION from interrupt corruption and improved “session.save_path” check, identified by Stefan Esser. (CVE-2009-4143, Stas)
• Fixed bug #49785 (insufficient input string validation of htmlspecialchars()). (CVE-2009-4142, Moriyoshi, hello at iwamot dot com)

(Please read the full announcement for more details)

Dotdeb packages of PHP 5.2.12 are now (finally) available for Debian “Lenny” and “Etch”, amd64 and i386.

Upgrading your servers is strongly encouraged because of several security issue, especially a multipart/form-data DoS (CVE-2009-4017). Please set the max_file_uploads parameter carefully.

The PHP 5.3.1 packages for Debian “Lenny” have been updated to fix :

• the php5-fpm binary
• the /etc/init.d/php5-fpm script

All should work fine now.

The official announcement

A few days ago, the PHP Group released PHP 5.3.1 :

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.1. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.3.x branch with over 100 bug fixes, some of which are security related. All users of PHP are encouraged to upgrade to this release.

Security Enhancements and Fixes in PHP 5.3.1:

• Added “max_file_uploads” INI directive, which can be set to limit the number of file uploads per-request to 20 by default, to prevent possible DOS via temporary file exhaustion.
• Added missing sanity checks around exif processing.
• Fixed a safe_mode bypass in tempnam().
• Fixed a open_basedir bypass in posix_mkfifo().
• Fixed failing safe_mode_include_dir.

Further details about the PHP 5.3.1 release can be found in the release announcement, and the full list of changes are available in the ChangeLog.

The Dotdeb changes

On the Debian side, some changes were made :

• the packages are now patched with the official Suhosin patch.
• beside the apache2, apache2filter, CGI and CLI flavours, the FPM one has now its own dedicated package, named “php5-fpm”. It will allow you to have greater performances and a lot of more features on a CGI-style installation (FYI, an init script, a config file and a nginx config sample are provided).

How to install?

Because migrating from PHP 5.2. to PHP 5.3 can break some applications, here is the Dotdeb release policy :

• PHP 5.2 is still the default branch for Debian Lenny for some weeks/months. PHP 5.3 packages are kept on a separate repository.
• PHP 5.3 will be the default branch for the upcoming Debian Squeeze (mid-2010)

Then , to install PHP 5.3 on your Debian “Lenny” box, just add these two entries in your /etc/apt/sources.list :

deb http://php53.dotdeb.org stable all
deb-src http://php53.dotdeb.org stable all

Now launch your favorite commands (apt-get update && apt-get upgrade) to upgrade your box.

In case you enjoy this new release, feel free to donate or to take a look at my whishlist… Xmas is coming 😉

PHP 5.2.11 has been published a few days ago by the PHP Group and its packages are now available for Debian Etch and Lenny, amd64 and i386. It fixes a lot of bugs and some security issues :

• Fixed certificate validation inside php_openssl_apply_verification_policy. (Ryan Sleevi, Ilia)
• Fixed sanity check for the color index in imagecolortransparent(). (Pierre)
• Added missing sanity checks around exif processing. (Ilia)
• Fixed bug #44683 (popen crashes when an invalid mode is passed). (Pierre)

To avoid the same negative feedbacks as about PHP 5.2.10, a lot of debug and changes has been made :

• The embedded_timezone patch has been disabled. You now have to set date.timezone manually in your /etc/php5/*/php.ini files, depending on your machine.

• If you encounter problems with some applications and the CGI flavour, remember to set cgi.fix_pathinfo=1 in your php.ini (thanks Scott for reporting this)

As usual, read the full Changelog before upgrading.