What is 'YTowOnt9'?

PhpHtmlOutput

Php Problem Overview


Our (PHP) framework sometimes renders hidden inputs with value YTowOnt9. I can't find that string anywhere in the (huge) codebase, and can't figure out where it came from. I decided to Google for that particular string, and the result surprised me. Over half a million - kind of random - hits. I haven't found any page describing the value itself. It has 0 hits on Stack Overflow.

Is YTowOnt9 some kind of magic string?

Php Solutions


Solution 1 - Php

It seems to be a PHP-serialized empty array, base 64 encoded.

$ base64 -D <<< 'YTowOnt9'
a:0:{}
$ php -r 'var_dump(unserialize(base64_decode("YTowOnt9")));'
array(0) {
}

There are many scripts that serialize arrays of data. When the arrays have data, they vary greatly, so the Base64 encoded PHP-serialized values do too, but when they are empty they are all the same. It makes it look as if a lot of very different PHP scripts have this random string in common.

Attributions

All content for this solution is sourced from the original question on Stackoverflow.

The content on this page is licensed under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.

Content TypeOriginal AuthorOriginal Content on Stackoverflow
QuestionSherlockView Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - PhpkojiroView Answer on Stackoverflow