Pro PHP Security: From Application Security Principles to the Implementation of XSS Defenses, Second Edition

Preventing Temporary File Abuse

Now that you have an understanding of what temporary files are, and how they can be abused, let's turn to strategies for preventing such unwarranted usage.

In Chapters 15 and 16 we will discuss at length how to secure your network connections using SSL/TLS and SSH. But even if you succeed in using one of these methods to keep an attacker from gaining shell or FTP access to your machine, an attacker could possibly still gain some measure of access by using malicious temporary files.

There are several ways to make this kind of abuse, if not impossible, at least very hard to do.

Make Locations Difficult

Possibly the single most important step you can take to minimize the possibility of abuse of your temporary files ...