Comment by tjallingt

I have some questions about two things in the exploit code that puzzled me:

  my $php_code = 'eval(\'
     header("X-Accel-Buffering: no");
     header("Content-Encoding: none");
     header("Connection: close");
     error_reporting(0);
     echo file_get_contents("/etc/passwd");
     ob_end_flush();
     ob_flush();
     flush();
  \');';

1. they seem to be using php to code the exploit (solely based on the $ before the variable name) but i've never seen the 'my' keyword before, what exactly is this language?

2. if i understand the exploit correctly they got remote code execution by finding the pointer to 'zend_eval_string' and then feeding the above code into it. doesn't that mean the use of 'eval' in the code that is being executed is unnecessary?