That is not clear at all and pretty useless. What does it mean? I should not accept any user input at all?
> strip everything that is not needed
That does not always work. What if I have a comment form that should accept any characters?
No, it means you should never assume that user data is safe, or even sane. Assume, rather, that everything every user is sending you is malicious, all the time, and write your code accordingly.
>. What if I have a comment form that should accept any characters?
First, you probably shouldn't, because your database and HTML should be using explicit character encodings, so a comment form that accepts anything doesn't make a lot of sense. How are you expecting to deal with "any characters"? What happens when they paste in a binary blob, or javascript code?
Secondly, assuming you want to do that, you still shouldn't trust the data. Add it to the database using parameterized queries, escape it when rendering, never mix it in to javascript variables and never serialize it into a format designed to unserialize executable objects.
It's not an unreasonable burden to expect web developers to at least be aware and code defensively. Especially with PHP.
I'm curious if Haskell's purity helps developers focus on this issue and therefore makes it easier to mitigate. Given that all user input/state already has to be handled carefully (for ex: with monads). It will be obvious in the codebase which parts need to be zero'd in on for possible attack vectors.
Perl and Ruby have included this as a 'tainted' flag, many functions cannot be called with a tainted string.
No, haskell's type system does, not its purity.
>Given that all user input/state already has to be handled carefully (for ex: with monads)
What? Monads are not some mythical beast, there is nothing "handled carefully" about it. A monad is just a general interface.
I was explaining what monads are. You have read some of the weird misconceptions about haskell and monads and are now repeating them.
I used monads only as an example (in brackets) but it's hardly the only form where purity creates clear divisions in the codebase. So, once again, the specific functionality of monads has nothing to do with it. I'm speaking about the coding style that Haskell promotes making detecting bugs easier during code reviews.
Having done security reviews of code I would have loved to have that type of distinction exist in a codebase compared to the usual OOP mess (with PHP or Ruby for example, which is typically the only paid work available in infosec) where state/user input is leaking all over the place. Compared to clearly defined paths containing IO - which are separated from pure functions which don't have unexpected side effects and require far less scrutiny.
I'm answering my own question here but I was hoping someone who has more experience than me at conducting security-centric code reviews would chime in to provide their perspective.
The guy is writing a valid point on Hacker(!) News. People writing comments on HN (especially to summarize a takeaway from a longer form article) are not required to accurately recapitulate entire dossiers of how to process input. It is completely valid to say "you should never trust user input". Somebody who is looking to make that "actionable" or "clear and pretty useful" can very very easily google the phrase and will turn up a lot of useful answers and information.
This is what is meant by the idea that the simplicity of the iPhone UI and/or automated IDEs has created a generation of helplessness and entitlement.
The good advice remains good advice: you should never trust user input. If you can't turn that into sound advice from Hacker News, your options become limited to, nobody should trust the code you write, you shouldn't write code, or you shouldn't read hacker news for advice.
But the idea that people need to write what you personally need to hear or they shouldn't write comments? that's nuts. Could I have written a more useful comment to you and to the community? I'll tell you this, I did think about it, and this my best shot at what I thought you and the community could benefit from!
There used to be a guy on usenet news who posted all sorts of stuff, and had the name of his company in his .sig line, and he included the phrase "these ARE the opinions of my company" instead of that boring old boilerplate "none of the opinions I express are..."
NEVER trust user input" is an important security
mantra to learn all on its own, like "wipe your
butt/wash your hands" is in another context.
Though I am not sure who the user is in this analogy.
Suppose you were handling snakes. Some snakes are not poisonous, and don't need to handled with the care you'd handle, say, a black mamba with. However, you are being advised to treat every snake you encounter as though it was the most poisonous snake known, and apply every care that you normally apply to snakes that you know are poisonous.
Will you handle the snakes? Yes, you're a snake handler, remember? But you handle all of them like they are deadly, even the ones you "know" to not be deadly.
User input ought to be treated with the same kind of respect, although in terms of user input the option of giving them a wide birth isn't always as practical.