(RHSA-2004:395) php security update

PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language commonly used with the Apache
HTTP server.

Stefan Esser discovered a flaw when memory_limit configuration setting is
enabled in versions of PHP 4 before 4.3.8. If a remote attacker could
force the PHP interpreter to allocate more memory than the memory_limit
setting before script execution begins, then the attacker may be
able to supply the contents of a PHP hash table remotely. This hash table
could then be used to execute arbitrary code as the ‘apache’ user. The
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned
the name CAN-2004-0594 to this issue.

This issue may be exploitable if using the default PHP configuration with
the “register_globals” setting of “On”. The Apache memory exhaustion bug,
fixed in a previous update to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, may also allow
this PHP issue to be exploited; this Apache bug does not affect Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 2.1.

Stefan Esser discovered a flaw in the strip_tags function in versions of
PHP before 4.3.8. The strip_tags function is commonly used by PHP scripts
to prevent Cross-Site-Scripting attacks by removing HTML tags from
user-supplied form data. By embedding NUL bytes into form data, HTML tags
can in some cases be passed intact through the strip_tags function, which
may allow a Cross-Site-Scripting attack. The Common Vulnerabilities and
Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2004-0595 to
this issue.

All users of PHP are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which
contain backported patches that address these issues.