Basic Intrusion Detection with Expose

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The recent high-profile hacks to major retailers and governments reveal that being hacked is not an if—it is a when. It is time for you to go beyond simple input filtering and into the world of Intrusion Detection Systems. Let’s start preventing the pollution. by Greg Wilson

Is Your Website Secure from Hackers?

Malicious traffic exposure has increased significantly year after year as reported by those who monitor the latest security trends. Every day, there is website defacement, identity and information theft, or money fraud. This article will invite you not to underestimate the security of your web application. You will find the most common weaknesses with real attack examples, statistical data, useful tools, and mitigation and prevention suggestions. by Nicola Pietroluongo

Keep Your Passwords Hashed and Salted

User accounts are one of the most prevalent features of web applications. This functionality typically includes allowing users to provide passwords, which need to be stored on a server in some manner. Assuring the safety of this data is a huge responsibility and is part of an unwritten contract that an application provider has with its users. In this article, we’ll examine best practices for storing passwords, methods attackers employ to break them, and how to use PHP’s built-in functions related to passwords. by Leszek Krupiński

Leveling Up: DeLoreans, Data, and Hacking Sites

Last month, I talked briefly about SQL injection, or SQLi attacks. This month, it’s all about that. The database engine that runs the queries and gives back results or changes data is able to interpret a provided instruction string into keywords, identifiers, and data in order to do what we’ve asked it to do. PDO provides a unified API for making database queries and a simple way to build and use prepared statements. Prepared statements give the developer a way to let the database engine know about the intention of the query. by David Stockton

Thinking Functionally: JavaScript Functional Programming Techniques

Users demand web applications that feel more like a native desktop or mobile so that they can interact with rich and responsive widgets. Naturally, this forces JavaScript programmers to implement enterprise architectures and adopt tried and tested programming paradigms and best practices to provide the best possible design. Functional programming is a paradigm that can have a profound effect on your JavaScript application code. When you begin to think functionally, you will learn to apply a set of proven techniques as well as implement a coding style that can help you write elegant, maintainable, and testable code. by Luis Atencio

Education Station: Introduction to Sculpin

I’ve been looking for some time for a tool or a blogging platform that is much simpler and more versatile, has the least amount of overhead possible, and, oh yeah, is object-oriented at its core. After quite a bit of looking and experimenting, I recently came up with two possible options: Jekyll and Sculpin. Of the two, I chose Sculpin, and it is the subject of this column and next month’s column. by Matthew Setter

Community Corner: September 2015

This month, we interview Elizabeth Naramore. We cover topics from marriage to community to conference driven development. Enjoy! by Joe Devon

finally{}: Security That Isn’t Security

Many of the things we do to secure our applications end up not truly being security. So what exactly is it? It’s what we call security by obscurity—where something is only secure because people don’t know it exists. by Eli White