FloeDesignTechnologies / phpcs-security-audit

FloeDesignTechnologies

phpcs-security-audit is a set of PHP_CodeSniffer rules that finds vulnerabilities and weaknesses rel...

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phpcs-security-audit v3

Name: phpcs-security-audit
Brand: phpcs-security-audit
SKU: //FloeDesignTechnologies/phpcs-security-audit
Rating: 2.975 (490 reviews)

About

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.

Install

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.

Usage

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/examplebaseruleset.xml ./vendor/pheromone/phpcs-security-audit/tests.php

FILE: tests.php

FOUND 18 ERRORS AND 36 WARNINGS AFFECTING 44 LINES

Drupal note

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.

Customize

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: * ParanoiaMode: set to 0 to reduce false positive. set to 1 (default) to be a lot more verbose. * CmsFramework: set to the name of a folder containings rules and Utils.php (such as Drupal7) to target a specific framework.

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.

Contribute

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:: * Ensure that

ParanoiaMode

controls how verbose your sniff is: * If the sniff is only some of the time a valid security concern, run it when

paranoia=true

only. * Warnings are generally issued instead of Errors for most-of-the-time concerns when

paranoia=false

. * Errors are always generated when you are sure about user input being used. * Prefer false positives (annoying results) over false negatives (missing results). *

paranoia=false

should solve false positive, otherwise warn on anything remotely suspicious. * Include at least one test that triggers your sniff into

tests.php

. * Keep the test as a one liner, it doesn't need to make sense. * Don't forget to include your new sniff in the

example_base_ruleset.xml

and

example_drupal7_ruleset.xml

when it applies.

Specialize

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:

php
    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.

Test

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.

Annoyances

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.

It's a generator of false positives created for people doing secure code reviews. It can help you learn what are the weak functions in PHP but can be counter productive in CI/CD environments. Set
```
ParanoiaMode
```
to
```
0
```
for a major cut-off on warnings.
This tool was created around 10 years ago. Some of its parts might look outdated, and support for old PHP code will still be present. The reality is that many code base scanned with it might be as old as the tool.
It's slow. On big Drupal modules and core it can take too much time (and RAM, reconfigure
```
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.
For Drupal advisories checking: a module with multiple versions might be secure if a lesser fixed version exists and you'll still get the error or warning. Keep everything updated on latest as recommended on Drupal's website.