Its quite a common occurrence to hear that PHP has been described as “Insecure”. You will hear this among many developers that choose not to use PHP. However, this bad light has been created by it’s users. Let me explain.
PHP In The Name
There is an obsession with this language to place it’s name inside software titles. Let me give you a few examples.
- phpNuke
- phpMyAdmin
- phpBB
- phpWebSite
- phpSurveyor
I think you get the picture. With other languages, this is generally not the case. You rarely see rorNuke or perlWebSite. The reason this is a problem is that whenever there is a bug within one of these pieces of software, it is automatically associated with PHP. With phpNuke in the equation, there are regularly bugs in this software, and generally this rubs off onto the PHP project. The bugs in phpNuke have nothing to do with the PHP interpreter, it is purely bad code created by the developers.
Too Easy To Learn
PHP has opened the doors to many more developers, and have made it relatively easy for people to get started with web programming. Because of the little amount of knowledge needed to get a quick site up using PHP, this has caused learning developers to release insecure code. This in itself is not a problem, as everyone has to learn at some point. The problem comes when they market it with PHP in the name (as described above).
Because it is easy to use, this has meant that many discussion forums etc are filled with people asking why their PHP sites got haxored, of course PHP will usually get the blame for this. All it does is fill Google up with “PHP Hacked” etc. This is a real shame, as PHP is one of the best interpreted languages out there. If we can slowly ween developers away from the phpMyProjectName idea, then perhaps PHP will start to shine through even more… Phew, all this licking PHP’s arse is making me thirsty.
Further Security
You system is only as secure as it’s weakest point. If you’re running a LAMP stack on your own, then there are always ways that you could improve the security. It is also important that your code is as secure as it can be. The links below will help you secure your code and LAMP setup.


Ben Nightingale
May 7th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
so, summary phpNuke phpBB are all written by babies,
php GOOD, babies BAD.