<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#pooling">Connection Pooling</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#API">Apache DBD API</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#prepared">SQL Prepared Statements</a></li>
+<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#security">SECURITY WARNING</a></li>
</ul><h3>See also</h3>
<ul class="seealso">
<li><a href="../misc/password_encryptions.html">Password Formats</a></li>
<p>It is up to dbd user modules to use the prepared statements
and document what statements can be specified in httpd.conf,
or to provide their own directives and use <code>ap_dbd_prepare</code>.</p>
+</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
+<div class="section">
+<h2><a name="security" id="security">SECURITY WARNING</a></h2>
+
+ <p>Any web/database application needs to secure itself against SQL
+ injection attacks. In most cases, Apache DBD is safe, because
+ applications use prepared statements, and untrusted inputs are
+ only ever used as data. Of course, if you use it via third-party
+ modules, you should ascertain what precautions they may require.</p>
+ <p>However, the <var>FreeTDS</var> driver is inherently
+ <strong>unsafe</strong>. The underlying library doesn't support
+ prepared statements, so the driver emulates them, and the
+ untrusted input is merged into the SQL statement.</p>
+ <p>It can be made safe by <em>untainting</em> all inputs:
+ a process inspired by Perl's taint checking. Each input
+ is matched against a regexp, and only the match is used,
+ according to the Perl idiom:</p>
+ <div class="example"><pre><code> $untrusted =~ /([a-z]+)/;
+ $trusted = $1;</code></pre></div>
+ <p>To use this, the untainting regexps must be included in the
+ prepared statements configured. The regexp follows immediately
+ after the % in the prepared statement, and is enclosed in
+ curly brackets {}. For example, if your application expects
+ alphanumeric input, you can use:</p>
+ <div class="example"><p><code>
+ <code>"SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE input = %s"</code>
+ </code></p></div>
+ <p>with other drivers, and suffer nothing worse than a failed query.
+ But with FreeTDS you'd need:</p>
+ <div class="example"><p><code>
+ <code>"SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE input = %{([A-Za-z0-9]+)}s"</code>
+ </code></p></div>
+ <p>Now anything that doesn't match the regexp's $1 match is
+ discarded, so the statement is safe.</p>
+ <p>An alternative to this may be the third-party ODBC driver,
+ which offers the security of genuine prepared statements.</p>
</div>
<div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="directive-section"><h2><a name="DBDExptime" id="DBDExptime">DBDExptime</a> <a name="dbdexptime" id="dbdexptime">Directive</a></h2>