Web Application Topics
Rietta's web application posts cover password practices, bcrypt versus SHA256, remote pair programming, and related dev topics.
05/10/2016
Bad Password Practices are Responsible For Most Data Breaches. You Can do Better.
by Frank Rietta
Verizon DBIR says 61% of data breaches are the result of bad password practices. Your app can avoid some of the pitfalls with a few precautions, especially using slow hashes and 2FA.
02/05/2016
What is the difference between bcrypt and SHA256?
by Frank Rietta
TL;DR; SHA1, SHA256, and SHA512 are all *fast hashes* and are bad for passwords. BCRYPT is a *slow hash* and is good for passwords. Always use slow hashes, never fast hashes.
10/11/2015
What is an Abuser Story (Software)
by Frank Rietta
In software development and product management, an abuser story is a user story from the point of view of a malicious adversary. Abuser stories are used with agile software development methodologies as the basis for defining the activities that should be actively blocked or mitigated by the software and proven by automated regression testing.
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.
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.
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.