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Why we disable allow_url_fopen

With regards to security, we follow the “Shared Responsibility” principle: our operations team manages all parts of the hosting platform while our customers take care of their web applications. The downside of this approach is that since we don’t control the application layer, we can’t ensure that security on this level is as tight as it should be.

One particular security risk is including remote content by using the PHP function fopen() with an external URL. We decided to disable the use of this function by default.

If you find error messages like the ones below in your logs, then your application probably tries (unsuccessfully) to include remote content:

  • Warning: fopen() [function.fopen]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /.../ on line (...)
  • Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /.../ on line (...)
  • Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /.../ on line (...)
  • Warning: getimagesize() [function.getimagesize]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /.../ on line (...)
  • Warning: readfile() [function.readfile]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /.../ on line (...)

In this case, please take a look at the following references. There are better – i.e. more secure – alternatives to using fopen() with an external URL, for example the Request class in Symfony.