PHP 5.2.7 Deemed Unsafe for Use, Older Version Makes a Comeback
The developing team behind the PHP general-purpose scripting language has recently come out and announced to the world that due to some issues within PHP 5.2.7, you should discontinue using it. This is the same PHP 5.2.7 version that dropped a few days ago and that was meant to make PHP safe and more stable.
“Due to a security bug found in the PHP 5.2.7 release, it has been removed from distribution. The bug affects configurations where magic_quotes_gpc is enabled, because it remains off even when set to on. In the meantime, use PHP 5.2.6 until PHP 5.2.8 is later released,” says the PHP Group.
The PHP Group worked over half a year to come up with PHP 5.2.7, and addressed quite an impressing number of bugs – a grand total of 170 bugs to be more precise, bugs which influenced pretty much every extension and code path in PHP. Ilia Alshanetsky at the time said that PHP 5.2.7 will presumably “be the most stable 5.2 release to date”. It seems that assumption was wrong since users are advised to switch back to the older 5.2.6 version which was released back in May, 2008.
In related PHP news, the third Alpha iteration of PHP 5.3 has just been made available to the general public and PHP enthusiasts. The PHP Group would very much appreciate if more users would get PHP 5.3 Alpha 3, put it through its paces and report back on any issues they stumble upon (bugs, glitches, compatibility problems, and so on). If you are not convinced, here is a quick list of what has been modified in PGP 5.3: namespaces, rounding behavior, and cc default compiler. The final, stable version of PHP 5.3 is scheduled for release sometime in the beginning of 2009, but with users’ participation and bug tracking, the development process could run at a faster pace.
“Due to a security bug found in the PHP 5.2.7 release, it has been removed from distribution. The bug affects configurations where magic_quotes_gpc is enabled, because it remains off even when set to on. In the meantime, use PHP 5.2.6 until PHP 5.2.8 is later released,” says the PHP Group.
The PHP Group worked over half a year to come up with PHP 5.2.7, and addressed quite an impressing number of bugs – a grand total of 170 bugs to be more precise, bugs which influenced pretty much every extension and code path in PHP. Ilia Alshanetsky at the time said that PHP 5.2.7 will presumably “be the most stable 5.2 release to date”. It seems that assumption was wrong since users are advised to switch back to the older 5.2.6 version which was released back in May, 2008.
In related PHP news, the third Alpha iteration of PHP 5.3 has just been made available to the general public and PHP enthusiasts. The PHP Group would very much appreciate if more users would get PHP 5.3 Alpha 3, put it through its paces and report back on any issues they stumble upon (bugs, glitches, compatibility problems, and so on). If you are not convinced, here is a quick list of what has been modified in PGP 5.3: namespaces, rounding behavior, and cc default compiler. The final, stable version of PHP 5.3 is scheduled for release sometime in the beginning of 2009, but with users’ participation and bug tracking, the development process could run at a faster pace.
