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Old 02-06-2007, 01:10 PM  
raymor
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Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 3,745
Quote:
Originally Posted by mlove View Post
My passwords were encrypted, and authentication data was displayed just fine.
Prior to PHP, TeenCat was right, passwords were treated as information known only
to the user. Only a HASH of the password was saved in the password file, so the only
way for a bad guy to get the password was if the user gave it to the bad guy.
Apache set a variable for the user name so scripts could tell who the usr was, but the
passsword was a secret only the user knew. PHP of course took it's priority list from
Windows, were security is a footnote on page #762, so the PHP guys dug into the
Apache request_rec, got the password submitted by the user, and put it in a nice
variable so that all a hacker has to do is get you to post on a PHP forum and in most
cases he can easily crack the forum to have it include your password in a comment
tag within your post.
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