php - Is SQL injection a risk today?

Question

I've been reading about SQL injection attacks and how to avoid them, although I can never seem to make the "awful" examples given work, e.g. see this post.

I created a PHP file and a table in the database, had a value passed through $_GET and tried to delete the table by doing bob'); drop table students; -- and it didn't work. PHP automatically escapes the ' and the query has an error, no harm done. Same issue when trying to replicate login "attacks" like AND WHERE 1=1 etc.

example code:

<?php
$id = $_GET['id'];

$sql = "INSERT INTO Users (Username) VALUES ($id)";
echo $sql;
mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error());

And I'd pass sql.php?id=1); delete from Users; --

So is this some dated thing that used to apply in the days of PHP3 or something, and nowadays even novices are protected from things like magic quotes?

I'm using PHP5 on Ubuntu.

Answer 1

Quite the contrary. Magic quotes are deprecated in PHP5 and will be completely removed in PHP 5.4, as they brought more confusion to the programming world than they did good. Checking whether magic quotes are active, and escaping any SQL input scrupulously if necessary, is still very, very important... No reason to feel bad though, we've all been there, and my unknowing ass has been saved by magic quotes countless times :)

The PHP manual on magic quotes explains everything.