31Mar

GST/HST Changes for BC and PEI


As you may already know, the Canada Revenue Agency is changing how sales taxes are administered in British Columbia and Prince Edward Island.

British Columbia

On April 1, 2013 the 12% HST will be replaced by the 5% GST.

Price Edward Island

On April 1, 2013 PEI will follow the provinces of Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador in replacing its PST with the HST. The combined HST rate in PEI will be 14%, of which 5% will represent the federal part and 9% the provincial part.

Mr.Host will be adjusting our tax rates as of midnight on April 1st, 2013. Good news for our BC customers who’s monthly bills will be going down; unfortunately, our PEI customers aren’t as lucky.

20Dec

PHP 5.3.20 Upgrade


This evening all Mr.Host web servers have been upgraded to PHP 5.3.20. Below are the changes since version 5.3.17:

Version 5.3.18

  • Core
    • Fixed bug #63111 (is_callable() lies for abstract static method).
    • Fixed bug #63093 (Segfault while load extension failed in zts-build).
    • Fixed bug #62976 (Notice: could not be converted to int when comparing some builtin classes).
    • Fixed bug #61767 (Shutdown functions not called in certain error situation).
    • Fixed bug #61442 (exception threw in __autoload can not be catched).
    • Fixed bug #60909 (custom error handler throwing Exception + fatal error = no shutdown function).
  • cURL
    • Fixed bug #62085 (file_get_contents a remote file by Curl wrapper will cause cpu Soaring).
  • FPM
    • Fixed bug #62954 (startup problems fpm / php-fpm).
    • Fixed bug #62886 (PHP-FPM may segfault/hang on startup).
    • Fixed bug #63085 (Systemd integration and daemonize).
    • Fixed bug #62947 (Unneccesary warnings on FPM).
    • Fixed bug #62887 (Only /status?plain&full gives “last request cpu”).
    • Fixed bug #62216 (Add PID to php-fpm init.d script).
  • Intl
    • Fix bug #62915 (defective cloning in several intl classes).
  • SOA
    • Fixed bug #50997 (SOAP Error when trying to submit 2nd Element of a choice).
  • SPL
    • Bug #62987 (Assigning to ArrayObject[null][something] overrides all undefined variables).

Version 5.3.19

  • Core:
    • Fixed bug #63241 (PHP fails to open Windows deduplicated files).
    • Fixed bug #62444 (Handle leak in is_readable on windows).
  • Libxml:
    • Fixed bug #63389 (Missing context check on libxml_set_streams_context() causes memleak).
  • Mbstring:
    • Fixed bug #63447 (max_input_vars doesn’t filter variables when mbstring.encoding_translation = On).
  • MySQL:
    • Fixed compilation failure on mixed 32/64 bit systems.
  • OCI8:
    • Fixed bug #63265 (Add ORA-00028 to the PHP_OCI_HANDLE_ERROR macro)
  • PCRE:
    • Fixed bug #63055 (Segfault in zend_gc with SF2 testsuite).
    • Fixed bug #63284 (Upgrade PCRE to 8.31).
  • PDO:
    • Fixed bug #63235 (buffer overflow in use of SQLGetDiagRec).
  • PDO_pgsql:
    • Fixed bug #62593 (Emulate prepares behave strangely with PARAM_BOOL).
  • Phar:
    • Fixed bug #63297 (Phar fails to write an openssl based signature).
  • Streams:
    • Fixed bug #63240 (stream_get_line() return contains delimiter string).

Version 5.3.20

  • Zend Engine:
    • Fixed bug #63635 (Segfault in gc_collect_cycles).
    • Fixed bug #63512 (parse_ini_file() with INI_SCANNER_RAW removes quotes from value).
    • Fixed bug #63468 (wrong called method as callback with inheritance).
  • Core:
    • Fixed bug #63451 (config.guess file does not have AIX 7 defined, shared objects are not created).
    • Fixed bug #63377 (Segfault on output buffer).
  • Apache2 Handler SAPI:
    • Enabled Apache 2.4 configure option for Windows.
  • Date:
    • Fixed bug #63435 (Datetime::format(‘u’) sometimes wrong by 1 microsecond).
  • Fileinfo:
    • Fixed bug #63248 (Load multiple magic files from a directory under Windows).
    • Fixed bug #63590 (Different results in TS and NTS under Windows).
  • FPM:
    • Fixed bug #63581 (Possible null dereference and buffer overflow).
  • Imap:
    • Fixed bug #63126 (DISABLE_AUTHENTICATOR ignores array).
  • MySQLnd:
    • Fixed bug #63398 (Segfault when polling closed link).
  • Reflection:
    • Fixed bug #63614 (Fatal error on Reflection).
  • SOAP
    • Fixed bug #63271 (SOAP wsdl cache is not enabled after initial requests).
24Sep

PHP 5.3.17 Upgrade


This evening all Mr.Host web servers have been upgraded to PHP 5.3.17. We missed a few updates between 5.3.14 and 5.3.17, so this post outlines all the changes since 5.3.14.

5.3.15

  • Zend Engine
    • Fixed bug #51094 (parse_ini_file() with INI_SCANNER_RAW cuts a value that includes a semi-colon)
  • COM
    • Fixed bug #62146 com_dotnet cannot be built shared
  • Core
    • Fixed potential overflow in _php_stream_scandir, CVE-2012-2688
    • Fixed bug #62432 (ReflectionMethod random corrupt memory on high concurrent)
    • Fixed bug #62443 (Crypt SHA256/512 Segfaults With Malformed Salt)
  • Fileinfo
    • Fixed magic file regex support
  • FPM
    • Fixed bug #61045 (fpm don’t send error log to fastcgi clients)
    • Fixed bug #61835 (php-fpm is not allowed to run as root)
    • Fixed bug #61295 (php-fpm should not fail with commented ‘user’ for non-root start)
    • Fixed bug #61026 (FPM pools can listen on the same address)
    • Fixed bug #62033 (php-fpm exits with status 0 on some failures to start)
    • Fixed bug #62153 (when using unix sockets, multiples FPM instances can be launched without errors)
    • Fixed bug #62160 (Add process.priority to set nice(2) priorities)
    • Fixed bug #61218 (FPM drops connection while receiving some binary values in FastCGI requests)
    • Fixed bug #62205 (php-fpm segfaults (null passed to strstr))
  • Intl
    • Fixed bug #62083 (grapheme_extract() memory leaks)
    • Fixed bug #62081 (IntlDateFormatter constructor leaks memory when called twice)
    • Fixed bug #62070 (Collator::getSortKey() returns garbage)
    • Fixed bug #62017 (datefmt_create with incorrectly encoded timezone leaks pattern)
    • Fixed bug #60785 (memory leak in IntlDateFormatter constructor)
  • JSON
    • Reverted fix for bug #61537
  • Phar
    • Fixed bug #62227 (Invalid phar stream path causes crash)
  • Reflection
    • Fixed bug #62384 (Attempting to invoke a Closure more than once causes segfault)
    • Fixed bug #62202 (ReflectionParameter::getDefaultValue() memory leaks with constant)
  • SPL
    • Fixed bug #62262 (RecursiveArrayIterator does not implement Countable)
  • SQLite
    • Fixed open_basedir bypass, CVE-2012-3365
  • XML Write
    • Fixed bug #62064 (memory leak in the XML Writer module)
  • Zip
    • Upgraded libzip to 0.10

5.3.16

  • Core
    • Fixed bug #62763 (register_shutdown_function and extending class).
    • Fixed bug #62744 (dangling pointers made by zend_disable_class).
    • Fixed bug #62716 (munmap() is called with the incorrect length).
    • Fixed bug #62460 (php binaries installed as binary.dSYM).
    • Fixed bug #60194 (–with-zend-multibyte and –enable-debug reports LEAK with run-test.php).
  • CURL
    • Fixed bug #62839 (curl_copy_handle segfault with CURLOPT_FILE).
    • Fixed bug #62499 (curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, “”) returns false).
  • DateTime
    • Fixed bug #62500 (Segfault in DateInterval class when extended).
  • Enchant
    • Fixed bug #62838 (enchant_dict_quick_check() destroys zval, but fails to initialize it).
  • PDO
    • Fixed bug #62685 (Wrong return datatype in PDO::inTransaction()).
  • Reflection
    • Fixed bug #62715 (ReflectionParameter::isDefaultValueAvailable() wrong result).
  • Session
    • Fixed bug (segfault due to retval is not initialized).
  • SPL
    • Fixed bug #62616 (ArrayIterator::count() from IteratorIterator instance gives Segmentation fault)

5.3.17

  • Core
    • Fixed bug (segfault while build with zts and GOTO vm-kind)
    • Fixed bug #62955 (Only one directive is loaded from “Per Directory Values” Windows registry)
    • Fixed bug #62763 (register_shutdown_function and extending class)
    • Fixed bug #62744 (dangling pointers made by zend_disable_class)
    • Fixed bug #62716 (munmap() is called with the incorrect length)
    • Fixed bug ##62460 (php binaries installed as binary.dSYM)
  • CURL
    • Fixed bug #62839 (curl_copy_handle segfault with CURLOPT_FILE)
  • DateTime
    • Fixed bug #62852 (Unserialize invalid DateTime causes crash)
  • Intl
    • Fix null pointer dereferences in some classes of ext/intl
  • MySQLnd
    • Fixed bug #62885 (mysqli_poll – Segmentation fault)
  • PDO
    • Fixed bug #62685 (Wrong return datatype in PDO::inTransaction())
  • Session
    • Fixed bug (segfault due to retval is not initialized)
    • SPL Fixed bug #62904 (Crash when cloning an object which inherits SplFixedArray)
  • Enchant
    • Fixed bug #62838 (enchant_dict_quick_check() destroys zval, but fails to initialize it)
02Jul

Secure FTP (Implicit and Explicit FTPS)


We’re excited to announce that the Mr.Host FTP servers have been upgraded to support secure encrypted connections, for all Mr.Host web hosting customers.

We’ve included support for both “implicit” SSL (running on port 990), and “explicit” (also referred to as TLS, AUTH TLS or FTPES), running the standard FTP port 21.

 

How to Upgrade

We’ve added a Knowledge Base article with details on how to enable encrypted FTP in the most common FTP clients, available here:

http://mrhost.ca/system/knowledge-base/ftp-access/ftp-client-setup/secure-ftp-using-ssl-encryption-with-ftp/

If you have any questions or need help configuring your FTP client, you can contact us @help@mrhost.ca

 

Technical Stuff – Implicit vs Explicit vs FTPS vs SFTP

There seems to be a lot of confusion over the different types of secure FTP, as there are several methods of securely transferring files that have been called “Secure FTP” at one point or another:

FTPS

Explicit FTPS  is an extension to the FTP standard that allows clients to request that the FTP session be encrypted. This is done by sending the “AUTH TLS” command. The server has the option of allowing or denying connections that do not request TLS. This protocol extension is defined in the proposed standard: RFC 4217.

Implicit FTPS is a deprecated standard for FTP that required the use of a SSL or TLS connection. It was specified to use different ports than plain FTP (usually port 990).

Mr.Host support both of these FTPS methods.

SFTP

Is not actually FTP, but a method for copying files over an SSH connection, using a similar command set.

Mr.Host does not currently support this.

02Jul

PHP 5.3.14 Upgrade


This evening all Mr.Host web servers have been upgraded to PHP 5.3.14. We missed a few updates between 5.3.10 and 5.3.14, so this post outlines all the changes since 5.3.10.

5.3.11

Security Enhancements for both PHP 5.3.11 and PHP 5.4.1:

    • Fixed bug #54374 (Insufficient validating of upload name leading to corrupted $_FILES indices). (CVE-2012-1172).
    • Add open_basedir checks to readline_write_history and readline_read_history.

Security Enhancement affecting PHP 5.3.11 only:

    • Fixed bug #61043 (Regression in magic_quotes_gpc fix for CVE-2012-0831).

Key enhancements in these releases include:

    • Added debug info handler to DOM objects.
    • Fixed bug #61172 (Add Apache 2.4 support).

5.3.12, 5.3.13

The releases complete a fix for a vulnerability in CGI-based setups (CVE-2012-2311). Note: mod_php and php-fpm are not vulnerable to this attack.

PHP 5.4.3 fixes a buffer overflow vulnerability in the apache_request_headers() (CVE-2012-2329). The PHP 5.3 series is not vulnerable to this issue.

5.3.14

The release fixes multiple security issues: A weakness in the DES implementation of crypt and a heap overflow issue in the phar extension

PHP 5.4.4 and PHP 5.3.14 fixes over 30 bugs. Please note that the use of php://fd streams is now restricted to the CLI SAPI

For a full list of changes from PHP v 5.3.10 to 5.3.14, see the ChangeLog.