Should I impersonate PHP via FastCGI?

Posted by AKeller on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by AKeller
Published on 2011-06-21T21:56:27Z Indexed on 2011/06/23 8:24 UTC
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I am installing the latest version of PHP onto IIS 7.5 via FastCGI, and all of the instructions say that FastCGI should impersonate the calling client by setting

 fastcgi.impersonate = 1

If my website will have this configuration

  • dedicated application pool
  • application pool identity of ApplicationPoolIdentity
  • anonymous authentication only (as IUSR)

why do I want to impersonate?

I come from an ASP.NET background, where the IUSR gets read-only permissions and the application pool identity gets any write permissions. Giving write access to the IUSR usually opens the door for WebDAV vulnerabilities. So I hesitate to let PHP run as the IUSR.

I can't find many people asking this question (1 | 2) so I think I must be missing something. Can someone clarify this for me?

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