When protecting your server environment you’ll want to ensure that two things happen. Firstly, you’ll want to keep your scripts from prying eyes; you want to make sure that you don’t accept input that will break your code. Secondly, and most importantly, you want to stop anyone from executing their own code on your servers.
Today I’m going to start a three part series looking at security issues affecting web developers. The specifics apply to PHP developers, but the general concepts carry across all technologies.
Any significant website is going to consist of three core layers: the client side code (HTML and JavaScript), server code (PHP) and a storage layer (MySQL). As a developer you should be aware of the security implications of each layer of technology and how you can best secure your code.
To most of you the term "rainbow table" is probably familiar. You are probably aware that they are used to aid the reversing of one-way hashes, usually when trying to crack a password. I personally think that they are a nifty little hack, and so I’d like to explain a little about how they are implemented.
