Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


Security notice: PHP 7.4 is *dead*
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

Security notice: PHP 7.4 is *dead*

With everyone all abuzz about deals, it's easy to forget about security.

Today's big security news is that PHP 7.4 (and thereby 7.x as a whole) is finally dead. It's past time to start thinking about migrating to 8.0 or 8.1, if you haven't yet migrated, as those are the only versions getting new security updates as of this writing.

Some interesting related links:

You may find that LTS distros still backport some of the patches for 8.x to 7.x. But really, you should be looking at migration paths: migrating now is less hassle than potential pwnage later.

If you're on a RedHat-derived distro (RHEL/CentOS/Alma/Rocky/etc.), take a look at Remi's Repo for the best third party packaging I know of. (Remi is a PHP contributor, so you can be pretty sure the builds are done "right", rather than being some rando on the net scratching their own itch.)

From Ubuntu-y friends, I keep hearing that this is the One True PPA to use. I don't use Debian-derived distributions, so I cannot say much more than that.

For openSUSE/SLES, devel:languages:php is the place to look. There are, of course, other OBS repos available. But devel:languages:php is the "official SuSE upstream". You can also install it via sudo opi php8 if you have opi installed.

And if you are thinking of waiting a few days, consider jumping straight to PHP 8.2 which is coming any time now. :)

«1

Comments

  • My website is still on php 5.4

  • I came prepared with a case of 40s to pour out

  • @stefeman said:
    My website is still on php 5.4

    YOLO

  • already upgraded all my php project to 8.1 \o/

    Thanked by 1greentea
  • I also came prepared with a case of cookies :3

  • I am already migrating my code from php8.1 to php8.2 :)

    8.2 may release on December 8th 2022

    Thanked by 1greentea
  • If anyone is looking to migrate between PHP version, I highly recommend using Rector,

    https://getrector.org/

  • @evnix said:
    If anyone is looking to migrate between PHP version, I highly recommend using Rector,

    https://getrector.org/

    get rector or get rekt

    Thanked by 3Talistech evnix nick_
  • Daniel15Daniel15 Veteran
    edited November 2022

    PHP 7.x has been outdated for a while (8.0 was released around two years ago) so I'm surprised there's still people running it in production. On the other hand, there's things like this:

    @stefeman said:
    My website is still on php 5.4

    and I found something the other day still running on PHP 4...

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Thanked by 1greentea
  • as mentioned in another thread.
    Nothing to do here. Keep running as is. Make time to eventually upgrade.
    Cloudlinux and imunify360 have a hardened version of the PHP versions that are updated to some degree.

  • @Daniel15 said:
    PHP 7.x has been outdated for a while (8.0 was released around two years ago) so I'm surprised there's still people running it in production. On the other hand, there's things like this:

    @stefeman said:
    My website is still on php 5.4

    and I found something the other day still running on PHP 4...

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    I request link for this miracle.

  • Daniel15Daniel15 Veteran
    edited November 2022

    @stefeman said:

    @Daniel15 said:
    PHP 7.x has been outdated for a while (8.0 was released around two years ago) so I'm surprised there's still people running it in production. On the other hand, there's things like this:

    @stefeman said:
    My website is still on php 5.4

    and I found something the other day still running on PHP 4...

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    I request link for this miracle.

    You can find a bunch in Google. 20 year old builds of PHP, probably abandoned servers running Linux 2.2 or 2.4, still sitting and serving stuff. wow

    Thanked by 3lewellyn TODO scorcher9
  • netomxnetomx Moderator, Veteran

    @Daniel15 said:

    @stefeman said:

    @Daniel15 said:
    PHP 7.x has been outdated for a while (8.0 was released around two years ago) so I'm surprised there's still people running it in production. On the other hand, there's things like this:

    @stefeman said:
    My website is still on php 5.4

    and I found something the other day still running on PHP 4...

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    I request link for this miracle.

    You can find a bunch in Google. 20 year old builds of PHP, probably abandoned servers running Linux 2.2 or 2.4, still sitting and serving stuff. wow

    OMG

  • @Daniel15 said:
    20 year old builds of PHP, probably abandoned servers running Linux 2.2 or 2.4, still sitting and serving stuff. wow

    It's scarier than that:

    System Windows NT EOFFICE58 5.2 build 3790
    System Windows NT 5.0 build 2195

    You can't necessarily figure out immediately which attacks the Linux hosts would be vulnerable to. But you can with this kind of Windows information.

  • defaultdefault Veteran
    edited November 2022

    @lewellyn said:
    I also came prepared with a case of cookies

    Latest PHP 7.4 might be without official support, but it also has no critical vulnerability yet. Let's calm down and enjoy the holidays. There is time to upgrade later. Besides, some third party systems will patch it up for many years to come, so once again: there is absolutely no rush.

    No drama here. No popcorn here. No "cookies" here.

  • @lewellyn said: You can't necessarily figure out immediately which attacks the Linux hosts would be vulnerable to. But you can with this kind of Windows information

    Wow I haven't seen Windows 2000 in the wild for a long time!

    I remember Snopes.com was running on Windows Server 2003 until pretty recently (a few years ago)...

  • this is a fucking conspiracy. :s

  • i have some web-app for my client that running laravel 4.2 (with php 5.6) :neutral:

  • To think that I discovered php with php/fi ... it doesn't make us younger ;)

  • stefemanstefeman Member
    edited November 2022

    @lewellyn said:

    @Daniel15 said:
    20 year old builds of PHP, probably abandoned servers running Linux 2.2 or 2.4, still sitting and serving stuff. wow

    It's scarier than that:

    System Windows NT EOFFICE58 5.2 build 3790
    System Windows NT 5.0 build 2195

    You can't necessarily figure out immediately which attacks the Linux hosts would be vulnerable to. But you can with this kind of Windows information.

    It would take less than 30 mins to setup a script to abuse this stuff and harvest servers for questionable usage. I'm amazed that these are not hacked by anyone yet.

  • @stefeman said: I'm amazed that these are not hacked by anyone yet.

    They could be without anyone knowing and the attackers being discrete (not needing/willing to show that the box is pwnd).

  • The upgrade/update mania.

    Nowadays, everything from last year is considered "old," while two years is "ancient." LOL

    Our motorcycling forum is still running on PHP 5.6 (using the "hardened" CloudLinux 5.6 version).
    Anyone competent and willing to dedicate their time to updating the code (for a tap on the shoulder and a "good job") is more than welcome. Until then, it will stay with 5.6. So far so good. :)

    Oh, and WordPress still doesn't officially support anything beyond 7.4 as far as I know.

    Thanked by 2vero cheapdave
  • @bikegremlin said: WordPress still doesn't officially support anything beyond 7.4 as far as I know.

    WordPress definitely drives PHP major versions adoptions so yeah WordPress needs newer PHP version support.

    Bring on PHP 8.2 due in ~9 days for GA!

    On Centmin Mod latest beta :)

    php -v
    PHP 8.2.0RC7 (cli) (built: Nov 29 2022 14:24:34) (NTS)
    Copyright (c) The PHP Group
    Zend Engine v4.2.0RC7, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
        with Zend OPcache v8.2.0RC7, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies
    
    Thanked by 1dedipromo
  • verovero Member, Host Rep

    @bikegremlin said:
    The upgrade/update mania.

    Software devs can't use tricks like builtin batteries for planned obsolescence, but there's no need to, when stamping feet and crying "EOL" work impeccably.

    Thanked by 1bikegremlin
  • One of my website is still on PHP5.6. I am too lazy to work on a legacy CMS.
    Wordpress 6.1 is still in beta phase for PHP8.

  • Alot of WP sites under the issue of themes / plugins(quiite alot of them) not yet even support php 8.0 :sweat_smile:

  • Cloudlinux's Extended Support for Centos 6.x seems pretty good, but Docker is supposed to be meant for such things, right?

    If you add the security layer (firewall / WAF / mod_security) to the outer OS (host inside which docker runs) and run PHP 5.x/7.x on Centos 6.x / etc inside docker, it should mitigate against the attacks that make upgrades "mandatory", IMO.

    Any flaws in this idea?

  • WordPress supports PHP 8 and has since PHP 8 was released. I have lots of not-nice things to say about WP and its community, but I cannot say that Automattic slacks on supporting the latest versions of their requirements.

    From the core team's blog a few days prior to PHP 8.0's release:

    WordPress continues to encourage all users to run the latest and greatest versions of PHP. This includes PHP 8.0 upon its official release.

    And a note from that same post (two years old now but still relevant):

    support for old versions will remain as is for the time being, staying at PHP 5.6.20 and higher until usage numbers show that the impact on users will be minimal.

    So basically, people not upgrading their PHP makes the work of supporting newer versions harder. PHP 9 is likely to bring a large amount of modernization that was "too much" for PHP 8.

    Automattic has a hard decision to make for WP 6.2: leave PHP 8 support marked as "beta" as it has been for literal years now (though much of their user base uses 8)? or finally ditch PHP 5.6 support that has caused them to write a ton of polyfill-type stuff to support PHP 8 while also supporting 5.6? Time will tell what they decide, but it will certainly be strange optics if they don't officially support any officially-supported versions of PHP. (And, yes, there are discussions within core on this topic. Again, time will tell what happens.)

    If individual plugins don't support new major versions of PHP within two years of release, you should seriously be concerned about whether they're implementing best practices in the WP community, in general. So many times when I've had to clean up after WP pwnage, the vector of entry was some "simple" plugin that "shouldn't" have been able to be abused, yet it was because its maintainer did not take the time and care to feed their creation to be its best.

    And I'm not saying to not run commercially-supported "hardened" versions of PHP that actively backport and address CVEs. But the average user (especially places like LET) does not fall into that camp.

    Especially if they're using PHP on Windows (as many people do). PHP 5.6.40, since PHP 5 is a popular thing to bring up, has a CVE (fixed in 7.1.24) that can allow an attacker to easily crash the entire web server via a null pointer dereference.

    For those of you using downlevel (EOLed by PHP.net) versions of PHP and doing image handling that supports user-provided images, do make sure that this CVE is patched. (Fixed in 7.1.27, 7.2.16, and 7.3.3. The bug report has instructions on how to test it in the comments.) Exploitation is trivial if users can upload files as it just needs one of many magic strings in it for merely using exif_read_data() on the file (for example, to see if you need to apply rotation to a scale/rotation) is sufficient. There are a number of nefarious attacks in the wild used to surreptitiously obtain data from vulnerable sites using this CVE. The bug report calls out JPEG files for testing since you only need 8 bytes to trigger it, but you can literally make any image format trigger that badness.

    There are other vulnerabilities, as well, but that one is actively exploited daily. If your "hardened" PHP is vulnerable to that, it's not very hardened, honestly.

    And most Linux distros will only backport fixes for the CVEs that their paying customers complain about. So generally only the most severe, such as the above EXIF bug. Which might leave you vulnerable to various DoSes that require circumstances that those with support agreements and a sensitivity to CVE scanning don't happen to be affected by.

    And for those of you who freak out over upgrading major PHP versions only living about 3 years: how often do you change the tires on your car? Why is it about 3 years? Surely those treads are planned obsolescence?

    Software requires maintenance, just as your vehicle does. CVEs are the software equivalent to vehicle recalls. Just like with your car, it's up to you to determine whether you care about an individual recall. And jumping on someone letting people know "hey your manufacturer isn't going to put work into your release year getting active recalls anymore" is counterproductive. In software and cars alike, it's not something that gets a lot of attention. And people should be informed as to the fact that what they're using is no longer getting any focus from the manufacturer.

    And, in all honesty, if you don't like 3 year major release cycles in PHP, you might want another language. It took 12 years from Python's announcement that Python 2 was being sunsetted until they finally killed it, for instance.

    Thanked by 2cheapdave pbx
  • loythegreatloythegreat Member
    edited November 2022

    Upgraded from 7.4 to 8.1 yesterday. I'm surprised that I experienced no errors. It helps that all my WordPress plugins are regularly updated.

    Thanked by 2quicksilver03 pbx
  • @lewellyn following your signature, since your post is excellent, should I compliment Elliotj?

    Thanked by 2lewellyn pbx
Sign In or Register to comment.