I may be young and inexperienced, however, I am not stupid. Gerard is not my real name, but rather one I have been using in chat rooms and the like for a while now. Thanks to everyone for the comments, hopefully I can get this sorted out now. Regards, Gerard

even just discussing this subject here, even without your companies name, URL or other information, could be construed as a security breach!

Yes it could. It would have been better if he posted anonymously, but this shouldn't be his main concern. The vast majority of people who exploit these vulnerabilities know how to find them on their own. This does little to reduce the security of his web app.

As for informing your boss, I wouldn't make a big deal about it. Fix it, tell him you fixed a security problem, and suggest measures that would prevent the situation from arising in the future (secure programming standards, security audits, etc).

You said:

The vast majority of people who exploit these vulnerabilities know how to find them on their own.

Agreed. But there is no point in making their task any easier.

You said:

This does little to reduce the security of his web app.

Minor point, but it isn't his. Only worth making for what follows...

As for informing your boss, I wouldn't make a big deal about it.

He said:

I have tried to explain this to my boss

And that is his problem.

He said:

My current employer, with whom I have not been very long, and I only work here part time while continuing to study....

It's very easy to forget how little respect and authority one receives, if one young (somewhat of an assumption: he could be a mature student!) or new.

He's probably both!

You said:

and suggest measures that would prevent the situation from arising in the future (secure programming standards, security audits, etc).

Exactly what he is trying to do. However, given his current lowly position in the company, the hysterisis of "it's been working fine for a couple of years", the (overused) adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" and "what does he know, he's only a kid" .

He came here looking for advice on how to make his case, with authority, to his (apparently non-Perl/programming/security aware) boss.

Finally, you said:

Fix it, tell him you fixed a security problem

He said (my highlighting):

All the customer data that is submitted to the script is as well as being emailed to us, stored in a text file. However the text file to store the data in is passed as a hidden field from the html, and there is no check to make sure that the referring page is the correct one.

Any fix is most likely going to need (at minimum) prodedural changes on behalf of the customers.

Even if this were not the case, scenario (abbreviated).

Takes code home (no authority to do it on company time)...makes a few minor changes in preparation nothing significant, just setting stuff up for the (your) 'fix'. Installs it next day...monitors it carefully functions fine. Goes home for the weekend....

By now you can probably see where this is leading.

The ha...sorry, cracker that saw his append and tracked him, or had been "casing the joint" for a couple of weeks, makes his move. Several (hundred) customers credit cards get used for whatever, and who gets the blame???

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Conclusions....

Okay, Let's review:

All the customer data that is submitted to the script is as well as being emailed to us, stored in a text file. However the text file to store the data in is passed as a hidden field from the html, and there is no check to make sure that the referring page is the correct one.

So customer comes to the site, logs in, and currently their information (or more accurately, the location of the file containing the information) is passed via a hidden form field. There's no need for this really. The customer could just be passed a session identifier and all the remaining data would be stored on the server. This should be a relatively simple switch.

Now as for this:

cracker that saw his append and tracked him, or had been "casing the joint" for a couple of weeks, makes his move. Several (hundred) customers credit cards get used for whatever, and who gets the blame?

That's about equivalent to saying "if he puts locks on the doors and someone breaks in the next day, who's going to take the blame?" It's completely missing the point.

First off, there's no way a cracker's going to be monitoring a website with these vulnerabilities for weeks and not do anything. Secondly, not improving the security of a system for fear of being irrationally blamed for future incidents should be cause for dismissal on its own.

You seem to misunderstand that the point is in authority and responsibilities; even though his concern may be valid, he is not authorized to fiddle with the script and will be fired if he does. Whoever has authority is responsible for validating his concerns; if the responsible party chooses to dismiss it and damage happens, then the responsible party will be blamed for the damage.

It's the really twisted type of corporate-think that makes companies spend big $$$$ on support contracts and makes them mistrust opensource projects. Unfortunately, it's how the money goes around too, so irrational as it may seem, you either get with the program or search for a meal in other people's trashbins.

Makeshifts last the longest.