NYCPHP Meetup

[Chris Snyder]

Jayesh Sheth wrote:

> - scripts are disabled from reading outside of their domain-files 
> directory (something is changed in PHP's configurationhere ) 
> ["open_basedir Restrictions in effect, file is in wrong directory"] 

Yes, this is commonly known as "safe mode" php, and it was implemented 
to solve this very problem.

Can you run scripts written in other languages, though? Perl, or even 
shell scripts, *might* be able to access other areas...

Calling your scripts via CGI (where that allows them to be run suid) 
allows you to set them so that they are only readable by you -- this 
provides as high a level of protection as you can reasonably ask for.  
There is a performance hit, but on a shared server that's probably not 
an issue, especially as it is most likely tuned to support the extra 
processes.

 From your updated description it sounds like the ISP is taking a 
responsible approach, and at least giving you the option of making sure 
things are locked down. The only other question I would ask is whether 
you can use SFTP or SCP in place of FTP -- if someone can eavesdrop your 
password it doesn't matter how secure the filesystem is!