Red Hat / CentOS Linux Install Suhosin PHP 5 Protection Security Patch

Q. Wordpress and many other open source application developers asks users to protect PHP apps using Suhosin patch to get protection from the full exploit. Suhosin is an advanced protection system for PHP installations. It was designed to protect your servers from various attacks. How do I install Suhosin under RHEL / CentOS / Fedora Linux?

A. Suhosin was designed to protect your servers against a number of well known problems in PHP applications and on the other hand against potential unknown vulnerabilities within these applications or the PHP core itself including wordpress and many other open source php based apps.

Install Suhosin as extension

Download latest version of Suhosin, enter:
# cd /opt
# wget http://download.suhosin.org/suhosin-0.9.27.tgz
Make sure you have php-devel installed:
# yum install php-devel

Compile Suhosin under PHP 5 and RHEL / CentOS Linux

Type the following commands:
# cd suhosin-0.9.27
# phpize
#./configure
# make
# make install

Configure Suhosin

Type the following command to create Suhosin configuration file:
# echo 'extension=suhosin.so' > /etc/php.d/suhosin.ini

Restart web server

Type the following command to restart httpd:
# service httpd restart
If you are using lighttpd, enter:
# service lighttpd restart

Verify Suhosin installation

Type the following command:
$ php -v
Sample output:

PHP 5.1.6 (cli) (built: Jun 12 2008 05:02:36)
Copyright (c) 1997-2006 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.1.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2006 Zend Technologies
    with XCache v1.2.2, Copyright (c) 2005-2007, by mOo
    with Suhosin v0.9.27, Copyright (c) 2007, by SektionEins GmbH

You can find more information by running phpinfo():

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Sample output:

Fig.01: Suhosin information and settings displayed by phpinfo().

Further readings:

• Suhosin project home page.
• Php project home page.

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