I have a quick question concerning security. A friend of mine designed a sub called makeSafe.

Source:

sub makeSafe{
  my $value = $_[0];
  if($value =~ m/&#91;;><\*`\|&#93;/){
    $value =~ s/&#91;;><\*`\|&#93;//g;
  }
  return $value;
}
[download]

Anything submitted from a form to the script has this sub called on it when the variable is set. Everything is passed to a database using DBI's $dbh->execute($param1,$param2,...). He never calls system. He never calls eval. He never has a regex with the e modifier. My question is this: is this paranoia or what? When I ask him why he does this blindly, he always tells me that it's for security...so nobody can crack the box through his scripts.

Thanks in advance.

antirice    
The first rule of Perl club is - use Perl
The ith rule of Perl club is - follow rule i - 1 for i > 1

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