and standard_conforming_strings. The encoding changes are needed for proper
escaping in multibyte encodings, as per the SQL-injection vulnerabilities
noted in CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314. Concurrent fixes are being applied
to the server to ensure that it rejects queries that may have been corrupted
by attempted SQL injection, but this merely guarantees that unpatched clients
will fail rather than allow injection. An actual fix requires changing the
client-side code. While at it we have also fixed these routines to understand
about standard_conforming_strings, so that the upcoming changeover to SQL-spec
string syntax can be somewhat transparent to client code.
Since the existing API of PQescapeString and PQescapeBytea provides no way to
inform them which settings are in use, these functions are now deprecated in
favor of new functions PQescapeStringConn and PQescapeByteaConn. The new
functions take the PGconn to which the string will be sent as an additional
parameter, and look inside the connection structure to determine what to do.
So as to provide some functionality for clients using the old functions,
libpq stores the latest encoding and standard_conforming_strings values
received from the backend in static variables, and the old functions consult
these variables. This will work reliably in clients using only one Postgres
connection at a time, or even multiple connections if they all use the same
encoding and string syntax settings; which should cover many practical
scenarios.
Clients that use homebrew escaping methods, such as PHP's addslashes()
function or even hardwired regexp substitution, will require extra effort
to fix :-(. It is strongly recommended that such code be replaced by use of
PQescapeStringConn/PQescapeByteaConn if at all feasible.
parser will allow "\'" to be used to represent a literal quote mark. The
"\'" representation has been deprecated for some time in favor of the
SQL-standard representation "''" (two single quote marks), but it has been
used often enough that just disallowing it immediately won't do. Hence
backslash_quote allows the settings "on", "off", and "safe_encoding",
the last meaning to allow "\'" only if client_encoding is a valid server
encoding. That is now the default, and the reason is that in encodings
such as SJIS that allow 0x5c (ASCII backslash) to be the last byte of a
multibyte character, accepting "\'" allows SQL-injection attacks as per
CVE-2006-2314 (further details will be published after release). The
"on" setting is available for backward compatibility, but it must not be
used with clients that are exposed to untrusted input.
Thanks to Akio Ishida and Yasuo Ohgaki for identifying this security issue.
output area as INTERNAL not CSTRING. This is to prevent people from
calling the functions by hand. This is a permanent solution for the
back branches but I hope it is just a stopgap for HEAD.
