PHP Developers Network

Dear friend,

Nice post! Last week I asked my php's teacher about mysqli, but she does not know it.

So, I have got some issue when made the verification to protected pages.

Your article mentioned about this example code:



My question is about the logical operator "||". I can have this working only with "&&" logical operator.

Example:

Best regards and thanks a lot for a nice post.

Yes you can have it working with && as well; my personal reason for opting to use || (OR) is because even if only one condition is 'incorrect' the authentication process has failed and a user has to be logged in. The snippet of code you have says that all conditions have to be met before authentication is invalid i.e user_id is not set AND authenticated is not set AND authenticated is not equal to true AND...(etc).

The idea is still the same but i would rather have the authentication fail as easily as possible so any attempt to break it has to be made as difficult as possible.

I'm glad you found the tutorial useful :)

Hello!
It seems I have some incorrect condition I think.

I've got the verify session script working only in this way:

<?php
if (!isset($_SESSION['user_id']) || ($_SESSION['authenticated']) != TRUE || !isset($_SESSION['signature']))
{
session_destroy();
header("Location: mainlogin.php");
exit();
}
?>

Thanks again for this useful article.

Never knew md5 hashing algorithm could be so easily compromised - the reasons mentioned now make me feel wary of md5.
I thought they were an established standard for storing passwords.

I have used md5 on a live website of mine. Now what do i do for the existing list ?

Infact i am using md5 on a current under-development project - will change it.
But really don't know what to do about my already live website.

SESSION['signature'] is a great idea that i heard for the first time - will definitely try to use it.

About security issues like session fixation attacks, session hijacking etc mentioned above - thanks for the excellent link specially the pdf link

Live24x7 wrote:
> I have used md5 on a live website of mine. Now what do i do for the existing list
> ?
you can't do much for existing passwords (if this is what you are referring to), they will have to be re-entered by the user if you want them to enjoy the use of the new hash algorithm.

Disclaimer: I have limited experience with user login security issues. That said, I think the appropriate action to take for an existing site using MD5 hashing would depend on how critical the security issues are on that particular site. If it is non-critical (say, a game site), I wouldn't recommend changing it. If it involves financial or deeply personal data, you could add a new password column in your user database for the bcrypt hash, then announce a security improvement program to your users: they will be redirected to a page where they can set a new password for their account (which you would hash into the new column), but after some date, perhaps several months away, accounts not changed will be inactivated, requiring them to set the new password. In the meantime, your authentication process could first check to see if a new password exists and if so, use it to authenticate, otherwise use the old password, during the transition period. After some period of time, any remaining accounts without the new password could just be deleted, since they would likely be abandoned.

Or you could do it in a more transparent fashion. Set a "flag" in the database to indicate whether or not the encryption has been changed. Use the flag to determing which method is current whenever they login. Users should be changing passwords periodically anyway, so encourage them to do so, and if md5 is still in use when they change their password change it at that time and reset the flag.

WHAT?? Users should be changing passwords periodically?? What a radical idea! (Come on, tell me the truth, Bill, do YOU change yours periodically?--I'll be honest, I only do it when I'm forced to.)

I was speaking theoritically. You should hear the language I use when some furshluginner bank makes me change my password. It would make you proud to have been in the same Navy with the Submarine Service.

Actually I AM proud to have been in the same Navy as you silent and deep guys! GO NAVY!

Though still novice in php, i found this tutorial very usefull and it is opening a way for me to become a good php programmer. thanks a lot to the author

Very good tutorial for mysqli, this is my week point.

how you would log the user out using a "logout" link
or how you would say "Hello, USER!" but instead of user it uses the username that matches with the id created

i think i got it, but i just want to make sure... everything seems to be working fine. the logout page is what im not so sure of..

the logout link leads to "mysite.poo/logout/" page were the code below is in an index.php