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Bug #27154 Sending Referer header causes PHP to drop session & cookie
Submitted: 2004-02-04 23:21 UTC Modified: 2004-02-05 06:42 UTC
From: devel at vesaria dot com Assigned:
Status: Not a bug Package: Session related
PHP Version: 4.3.4 OS: Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux)
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
 [2004-02-04 23:21 UTC] devel at vesaria dot com
Description:
------------
When a client makes a regular request, PHP handles the session fine.  However, when the client sends a Referer header as well, PHP and sends a new session cookie, and doesn't carry over the session data.

Note that this only happens if the Referer header is sent, not if other headers are sent.

This has been confirmed by direct netcat connections, as well as several browsers.

$ nc localhost 80 -v
localhost [127.0.0.1] 80 (http) open
GET / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 03:57:00 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix)  (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.6b
Vary: *
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=5d0966fbcc5296708b88917b5a2fbf1f; path=/
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Pragma: no-cache
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

<html><head><title>

$ nc localhost 80 -v
localhost [127.0.0.1] 80 (http) open
GET / HTTP/1.0
Cookie: PHPSESSID=5d0966fbcc5296708b88917b5a2fbf1f 
Referer: http://some.other.site/

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 03:57:47 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix)  (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.6b
Vary: *
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=13dcdd68d0b27bbe04bb4f17a8407d23; path=/
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Pragma: no-cache
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

<html><head><title>

$ nc localhost 80 -v
localhost [127.0.0.1] 80 (http) open
GET / HTTP/1.0
Cookie: PHPSESSID=5d0966fbcc5296708b88917b5a2fbf1f 
X-Header: just another http header

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 03:58:25 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix)  (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.6b
Vary: *
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=5d0966fbcc5296708b88917b5a2fbf1f; path=/
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Pragma: no-cache
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

<html><head><title>

[Session]
; Handler used to store/retrieve data.
session.save_handler = files                                 ; Argument passed to save_handler.  In the case of files, this is the path                                     
; where data files are stored. Note: Windows users have to change this                                         
; variable in order to use PHP's session functions.          
;                                                            
; As of PHP 4.0.1, you can define the path as:               
;                                                            
;     session.save_path = "N;/path"                          
;                                                            
; where N is an integer.  Instead of storing all the session files in                                          
; /path, what this will do is use subdirectories N-levels deep, and                                            
; store the session data in those directories.  This is useful if you                                          
; or your OS have problems with lots of files in one directory, and is                                         
; a more efficient layout for servers that handle lots of sessions.                                            
;                                                                                                              
; NOTE 1: PHP will not create this directory structure automatically.                                          
;         You can use the script in the ext/session dir for that purpose.                                      
; NOTE 2: See the section on garbage collection below if you choose to                                         
;         use subdirectories for session storage             
;                                                            
; The file storage module creates files using mode 600 by default.                                             
; You can change that by using                               
;                                                            
;     session.save_path = "N;MODE;/path"                     
;   where MODE is the octal representation of the mode. Note that this                                           
; does not overwrite the process's umask.
session.save_path = "/tmp"

; Whether to use cookies.
session.use_cookies = 1

; This option enables administrators to make their users invulnerable to 
; attacks which involve passing session ids in URLs;defaults to 0.
; session.use_only_cookies = 1

; Name of the session (used as cookie name).
session.name = PHPSESSID

; Initialize session on request startup.
session.auto_start = 1

; Lifetime in seconds of cookie or, if 0, until browser is restarted.
session.cookie_lifetime = 0

; The path for which the cookie is valid.
session.cookie_path = /

; The domain for which the cookie is valid.
session.cookie_domain =

; Handler used to serialize data.  php is the standard serializer of PHP
session.serialize_handler = php                                                                              
; Define the probability that the 'garbage collection' process is started
; on every session initialization.
; The probability is calculated by using gc_probability/gc_divisor,
; e.g. 1/100 means there is a 1% chance that the GC process starts
; on each request.

session.gc_probability = 1
session.gc_divisor     = 1000

; After this number of seconds, stored data will be seen as 'garbage' and
; cleaned up by the garbage collection process.
session.gc_maxlifetime = 1440

; PHP 4.2 and less have an undocumented feature/bug that allows you to
; to initialize a session variable in the global scope, albeit register_globals
; is disabled.  PHP 4.3 and later will warn you, if this feature is used.
; You can disable the feature and the warning seperately. At this time,
; the warning is only displayed, if bug_compat_42 is enabled.

session.bug_compat_42 = 0
session.bug_compat_warn = 1

; Check HTTP Referer to invalidate externally stored URLs containing ids.
; HTTP_REFERER has to contain this substring for the session to be
; considered as valid.
session.referer_check = 0

; How many bytes to read from the file.                                                                                   ;session.entropy_length = 0                                                                                    

; Specified here to create the session id.
;session.entropy_file =

session.entropy_length = 16

session.entropy_file = /dev/urandom

; Set to {nocache,private,public,} to determine HTTP caching aspects.
; or leave this empty to avoid sending anti-caching headers.
session.cache_limiter = nocache

; Document expires after n minutes.
session.cache_expire = 180

; trans sid support is disabled by default.
; Use of trans sid may risk your users security.
; Use this option with caution.
; - User may send URL contains active session ID
;   to other person via. email/irc/etc.
; - URL that contains active session ID may be stored
;   in publically accessible computer. 
; - User may access your site with the same session ID
;   always using URL stored in browser's history or bookmarks.
session.use_trans_sid = 0

; Select a hash function
; 0: MD5   (128 bits)
; 1: SHA-1 (160 bits)

session.hash_function = 0                                                                                      

; Define how many bits are stored in each character when converting
; the binary hash data to something readable.
;
; 4 bits: 0-9, a-f
; 5 bits: 0-9, a-v
; 6 bits: 0-9, a-z, A-Z, "-", ","
session.hash_bits_per_character = 5

; The URL rewriter will look for URLs in a defined set of HTML tags.
; form/fieldset are special; if you include them here, the rewriter will
; add a hidden <input> field with the info which is otherwise appended
; to URLs.  If you want XHTML conformity, remove the form entry.
; Note that all valid entries require a "=", even if no value follows.
url_rewriter.tags = "a=href,area=href,frame=src,input=src,form=fakeentry"



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 [2004-02-04 23:27 UTC] devel at vesaria dot com
Here is the relevant info from phpinfo()

 Configure        Command       './configure'       '--sysconfdir=/etc'
   '--localstatedir=/var'  '--with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs' '--disable-debug'
   '--enable-pic'            '--disable-cgi'            '--disable-rpath'
   '--enable-inline-optimization'  '--with-bz2' '--with-db3' '--with-png'
   '--with-gd'    '--enable-gd-native-ttf'   '--with-ttf'   '--with-gdbm'
   '--with-gettext'    '--with-ncurses'    '--with-gmp'    '--with-iconv'
   '--with-jpep'      '--with-openssl'     '--with-ftp'     '--with-zlib'
   '--with-layout=GNU'      '--enable-bcmath'     '--enable-magic-quotes'
   '--enable-sockets'        '--enable-sysvmem'        '--enable-sysvshm'
   '--enable-discard-path'   '--enable-track-vars'   '--enable-trans-sid'
   '--enable-yp'   '--enable-wddx'   '--without-oci8'   '--with-imap-ssl'
   '--with-mysql'    '--with-xml'    '--enable-bcmath'   '--enable-shmop'
   '--enable-versioning'        '--enable-calendar'        '--enable-dbx'
   '--enable-mbstring'                         '--enable-mbstr-enc-trans'
   '--with-curl=/opt/jail/usr' '--with-gd' '--with-mcrypt' '--with-mhash'
   Server API Apache
   Virtual Directory Support disabled
   Configuration File (php.ini) Path /etc/php.ini
   PHP API 20020918
   PHP Extension 20020429
   Zend Extension 20021010
   Debug Build no
   Thread Safety disabled


apache

   APACHE_INCLUDE no value
   APACHE_TARGET no value
   Apache Version Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a
   mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.6b
   Apache Release 10327100
   Apache API Version 19990320
   Hostname:Port www.pricequotes.com:80
   User/Group apache(48)/48
   Max  Requests  Per Child: 10000 - Keep Alive: on - Max Per Connection:
   200
   Timeouts Connection: 300 - Keep-Alive: 60
   Server Root /etc/httpd
   Loaded  Modules  mod_gzip,  mod_ssl,  mod_php4,  mod_setenvif, mod_so,
   mod_headers,   mod_expires,   mod_auth_anon,   mod_auth,   mod_access,
   mod_rewrite,   mod_alias,  mod_actions,  mod_asis,  mod_cgi,  mod_dir,
   mod_include,  mod_info,  mod_negotiation,  mod_mime,  mod_log_referer,
   mod_log_agent, mod_log_config, mod_env, mod_vhost_alias, http_core
      Directive    Local Value Master Value
   child_terminate 0           0
   engine          1           1
   last_modified   0           0
   xbithack        0           0


session

   Session Support          enabled
   Registered save handlers files user
           Directive         Local Value  Master Value
   session.auto_start        On           On
   session.bug_compat_42     Off          Off
   session.bug_compat_warn   On           On
   session.cache_expire      180          180
   session.cache_limiter     nocache      nocache
   session.cookie_domain     no value     no value
   session.cookie_lifetime   0            0
   session.cookie_path       /            /
   session.cookie_secure     Off          Off
   session.entropy_file      /dev/urandom /dev/urandom
   session.entropy_length    16           16
   session.gc_divisor        1000         1000
   session.gc_maxlifetime    1440         1440
   session.gc_probability    1            1
   session.name              PHPSESSID    PHPSESSID
   session.referer_check     0            0
   session.save_handler      files        files
   session.save_path         /tmp         /tmp
   session.serialize_handler php          php
   session.use_cookies       On           On
   session.use_only_cookies  Off          Off
   session.use_trans_sid     Off          Off
 [2004-02-05 06:42 UTC] sniper@php.net
Set the session.referer_check to empty string.
(I don't think your urls include 0 in them..)

And where did it say that you should paste all that crap from your php.ini in this report?!!!

 
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