php and extern en/decoding exe

[robertsamanek]

hi,

i've got following question:

i need to parse XML files (using php) on NT server. no problem so far :-). BUT: the incoming files (via ftp) are signed and encoded. i've a program in C++ which makes this en/decoding mechanisms, but it is not safe to call from php this program for encoding, because the C++ exe must write the decoded result in a tmp file (which will be parsed by php then) - and this is not secure. there can not be any part of the decoded content on disk...

can you give me some hint? i can not find any way how to for example share memory between php and this c++ exe... or another possible solution?

thank you in advance,
robert

[ame12]

Firstly, out of the box I don't think there's a way to share memory between PHP and some slave executable. So...

One of two possible scenarios, going from easiest to hardest:

1) Modify the C++ program to support a command-line option to do a private-key encryption of the temp/output file. Ideally, your PHP script would call the program with a random key so it would be able to pick up the tempfile, decrypt it and remove it.

2) Harder, but more secure: wrap the C++ code in a PHP extension that will be utterly private to your scripting.

Both of these assume that your tempfile is randomly named, BTW, so multiple threads won't write over each other's data.

RW

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