== The problem ==One More posts of the problems with shared web hosting (i.e. different people with each his/her own webpages) is that modern script languages such as PHP, Python, or Perl are too powerful. For example take the following PHP script:<pre><?phpfunction get_content($filename) { $handle = fopen($filename, 'r'); echo fread($handle, filesize($filename)); fclose($handle);}get_content('/home/ppuk34/www/forum/config.inc.php');?></pre>With PHP you could use open_basedir to prevent this, but there are more ways. For example [http://mgeisler.net/php-shell/ PHP Shell], a script that is [http://mgeisler.net/downloads/phpshell/SECURITY often mis-used] by people with not-so-good intentions. Or think about the [http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/santy_a.shtml Santy-worm] which mis-used phpBBquality. Again there is a solution in Not the form of safe_modeusual c***, but lots of PHP scripts break if you enable this. For Python, Perl, or CGI-scripts there are no easy ways and you have to use wrappers or other tricks to chroot these.pelsae
