Web Application Topics
Rietta's web application posts cover password practices, bcrypt versus SHA256, remote pair programming, and related dev topics.
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05/10/2016
Bad Password Practices are Responsible For Most Data Breaches. You Can do Better.
by Frank Rietta
Verizon's DBIR says 61% of data breaches result from bad password practices. Your app can avoid some pitfalls with precautions, especially slow hashes and 2FA.
Read More: Bad Password Practices are Responsible For Most Data Breaches. You Can do Better.
02/05/2016
What is the difference between bcrypt and SHA256?
by Frank Rietta
TL;DR: SHA1, SHA256, and SHA512 are fast hashes and bad for passwords. BCRYPT is a slow hash and good for passwords. Always use slow hashes, never fast ones.
Read More: What is the difference between bcrypt and SHA256?
10/11/2015
What is an Abuser Story (Software)
by Frank Rietta
An abuser story is a user story from a malicious adversary's point of view: what agile software should block or mitigate, proven by automated regression tests.
03/30/2015
Adding a Rake Task for SQL Views to a Rails Project
by Frank Rietta
How to keep SQL views as .sql files in db/sql_views and add a custom 'rake db:views' task to a Rails project, treating database views like ActiveRecord models.
Read More: Adding a Rake Task for SQL Views to a Rails Project
02/18/2014
Issue #6: February, 2014, Web Application Topics Newsletter
by Frank Rietta
Issue 6: get and compare the current Git branch in BASH, Don't Make Me Think as book of the month, and PaperClip, Yahoo, and Buffer security news.
Read More: Issue #6: February, 2014, Web Application Topics Newsletter
01/06/2014
Joppar's 'Tips on Securing Your Mobile App' Infographic Quoted Me!
by Frank Rietta
Read More: Joppar's 'Tips on Securing Your Mobile App' Infographic Quoted Me!
06/13/2013
OpenSSL: Encrypt Data with an RSA Key with PHP
by Frank Rietta
An example PHP function that encrypts arbitrary data, including strings and arrays, with an RSA public key generated with OpenSSL from the command line.
04/18/2012
mod_deflate: Dramatic website speed increase with Apache compression on Ubuntu Linux
by Frank Rietta
How to supercharge your mobile visitor's experience with mod_deflate, which tends to provide a 62% to 72% savings on bandwidth required to deliver each page.
Read More: mod_deflate: Dramatic website speed increase with Apache compression on Ubuntu Linux
01/14/2012
Rails: TypeError: nil can't be coerced into Float
by Frank Rietta
In Rails, whinny nil exceptions are a real pain. I like to use to_f when computing float values because nil.to_f is 0.0.
Read More: Rails: TypeError: nil can't be coerced into Float