[WEEKLY] Issue #25: March 17, 2003

By Harald Ponce de Leon

March 17, 2003

Security And Privacy Proposal
Filenames And Database Tables Definitions
Cross Site Scripting Vulnerabilities
Tax Implementation Update
New Wiki Documentation Site
Contributions Added/Updated In The Last 3 Days

Security And Privacy Proposal

The Security And Privacy Proposal discussed on the Developers forum has been realized and is now in CVS.

The implementation introduces a new Sessions configuration group with three parameters:

SESSION_WRITE_DIRECTORY (default /tmp)

It is recommended to change the location of where the file based sessions are being stored as /tmp is generally accessible to all users on the server.

SESSION_FORCE_COOKIE_USE (default False)

When enabled, sessions are only started when a set cookie is readable.

As cookies are depended on, this option will only successfully work when HTTP and HTTPS servers have the same top level domain, for example:

http://www.server.com and https://ssl.server.com will work, whereas

http://www.server.com and https://www.ssl.com/server/ will not work.

SESSION_CHECK_SSL_SESSION_ID (default False)

When enabled, the SSL_SESSION_ID automatically generated on secure HTTPS requests is stored in the session and verified on subsequent secure HTTPS requests. If the value has changed the customer must log in again to continue their actions.

Ross Lapkoff and Marcel van Lieshout are looking for workarounds on the SESSION_FORCE_COOKIE_USE option for it to be able to work on servers that use shared SSL certificates.

The discussions of the proposal can be read at:

http://forums.oscommerce.com/viewtopic.php?t=31928

The updated proposal is available at the new Wiki documentation site at:

http://wiki.oscommerce.com/proposalSecurityAndPrivacy

Filenames And Database Tables Definitions

During the implementation of the Security And Privacy Proposal, the application_top.php file on the Catalog went through a clean-up process.

Part of the process moved the filename and database table definitions to their own files.

This will ease the merging of the Catalog and Administration Tool files when it occurs for Milestone 4.

Cross Site Scripting Vulnerabilities

Daniel Alcántara de la Hoz alerted the team of 2 cross site scripting vulnerabilities existing in catalog/includes/header.php.

These and other vulnerabilities have been fixed, and can be seen with the Bug Reporter by viewing all Cross Site Scripting reports.

As these vulnerabilities exist on the developing Milestone releases, no point release of Milestone 1 will be made available.

Point releases will be made available when vulnerabilities are found on stable project releases.

The Cross Site Scripting bug reports can be seen here:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/bugs/action,search/type,Cross Site Scripting

Tax Implementation Updates

The tax implementation has been updated again as tax rates that were meant to be compounded were not compounding at all.

Updates were also made on the tep_round() function as PHPs native number_format() and round() functions produced different results when float and string values were parsed.

A bug report at PHP was opened due to this issue but turned out to be a float/mathematical issue instead of a PHP issue.

The updated tep_round() function now produces the expected results but may again be updated soon to increase its performance.

The PHP bug report can be seen here:

http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=22712

An updated proposal for the tax implementation can be read at the new Wiki documentation site at:

http://wiki.oscommerce.com/proposalTaxes

New Wiki Documentation Site

A new Wiki documentation site has been setup to start a public effort in writing documentation for the project.

Melinda Odom from oscdox fame has contributed a lot of help related documentation, Ian Wilson has started off the programming documentation, and Harald Ponce de Leon has started off the proposals section.

If you're interested in participating in the effort, or have questions to the Wiki site in general, get in touch at the Wiki forum channel provided at:

http://forums.oscommerce.com/viewforum.php?f=15

The Wiki documentation site can be reached at:

http://wiki.oscommerce.com

Live Shops List

Recent Live Shop entries are still pending to be activated which will be done during the week.

Contributions Added/Updated In The Last 3 Days

AdminLogin-0.0.5
SVFlix Bank Transfer
Low Stock Report
MS1 to L5 db upgrade
french-zone france metropolitaine
Product Attributes - Option Type Feature
Gift Certificates  - Generic
Protx Form Payment Module
PaySystems Module
Add Shopping Cart Info to Your Header
Big Images
Customer specific discount percentage
ot_commission 1.0
Bluepay Web Link Gateway
Ship 2 Pay v1.0 (MS1)
PDF data_sheet maker 1.1
Banner Picture Hack in Banner Manager
Infoboxes outside OSC
newsdesk_v_1.4_tarred
admin_controlled_bestsellers_images_scroll
NewsDesk
Card Zapper
Conditions, Privacy & Shipping with MySQL v1.0
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