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I'm providing a partial web hosting solution where my clients may upload and execute their own php scripts.

Besides the security routine I'll have to check (off topic here) I would like to know whether it is possible for me to prevent my clients to setup an "attack basement" in there?

I believe that I can't do much except making them sign some policy acceptance...

Also, since there's only a few IP shared by all the hosts, would there be a risk of everyone getting banned?

HopelessN00b
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Sebas
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2 Answers2

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Proper isolation between clients along with some restrict resources limitations would be the answer.

IN/OUTBOUND traffic (as suggested by voretaq7) , CPU, memory, disk usage, and disk IO are of the keys to achieve this. How to do it may vary according to the hosting solution you're using..

minniux
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If you let people execute arbitrary code in an unrestricted environment there is very little you can do to make it "secure" -- When I worked for an ISP that provided shared hosting with PHP we mitigated this by only selling to companies/individuals we had vetted to some extent to ensure they weren't J. Random. Haxor looking for a platform to launch attacks from, and honestly that's the best solution to this problem.

Beyond that you can restrict outbound network access (either with PHP settings or through a firewall - the latter being preferable).
This may frustrate legitimate users, but it will also prevent malicious users from launching attacks from your server.

Note that this only addresses OUTBOUND attacks - As you noted there are other things you need to consider to adequately protect your server itself. That would be an interesting follow-up question.

voretaq7
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  • yes you're right, I really have plenty of work to ensure my client's data security. But I'm on it! :-) – Sebas Mar 16 '13 at 23:26
  • What could you do from php to limit outbound attacks? I'm curious – Sebas Mar 16 '13 at 23:29
  • @Sebas Judicious use of `disable_functions` is usually about all you can do ([this site has some suggestions](http://lucb1e.com/?p=post&id=86) but I wouldn't say it's a complete list) – voretaq7 Mar 17 '13 at 05:10