Re: Perl code security (CGI related)

On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 15:47:28 BST, [email protected] said:
> I would suggest that you make a rule: any time there is the possibility that
> a user will be putting data into your application, you should enable Perl's
> taint mode.  Do a google search for 'perl taint' (no quotes) for a plethora of
> information on this excellent security tool.

One *important* precautionary note regarding Perl tainting:

It *does* prohibit unintended use of a user-supplied variable without some sort
of examination/validation/filtering beforehand.

It *does* *not* have any way of validating that *proper* filtering was done
(so, for instance, "change all spaces to spaces" would suffice to untaint the
data, while doing nothing for security).

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