Building Secure PHP Apps
Building Secure PHP Apps
is your PHP app truly secure? Let's make sure you get home on time and sleep well at night.
About the Book
Do you ever wonder how vulnerable you are to being hacked? Do you feel confident about storing your users sensitive information? Imagine feeling confident in the integrity of your software when you store your user's sensitive data. No more fighting fires with lost data, no more late nights, your application is secure. In this short book I'll give you clear, actionable details on how to secure various parts of your web application. You will also find scenarios to handle and improve existing legacy issues.
Several years ago I was writing a web application for a client in the CodeIgniter PHP framework, *shudder*, but CodeIgniter didn't include any type of authentication system built in. I of course did what any good/lazy developer would do and went on the hunt for a well made library to supply authentication capabilities. To my chagrin I discovered that there weren't any clean, concise libraries that fit my needs for authentication in CodeIgniter. Thus began my journey of creating Ion Auth, a simple authentication library for CodeIgniter, and a career long crusade for securing web applications as well as helping other developers do the same.
Here we are years later, a lot of us have moved on to other frameworks or languages, but I still repeatedly see basic security being overlooked. So let's fix that. I want to make sure that you'll never have to live the horror of leaking user passwords, or have someone inject malicious SQL into your database, or the suite of other "hacks" that could have been easily avoided. Let's make sure we all get home on time and sleep well at night.
Topics
This is a quick read, at just over 100 pages. This is a handbook style guide to specific items you can act on. The following sections will be covered:
- Never trust your users - escape all input
- HTTPS/SSL/BCA/JWH/SHA and other random letters, some of them actually matter
- Password Encryption and Storage for Everyone
- Authentication, Access Control, and Safe File Handing
- Safe Defaults, Cross Site Scripting and other Popular Hacks
Format
All code examples are written in PHP with accompanying source code on GitHub.
Progress
This book is now 100% complete and ready to school you. There will be occasional releases for errata and to keep things up to date.
About the Author
About the Contributors
Eric "Aken" Roberts is the Director of Application Development at Swarming Technology in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. You can often find him helping out in #Laravel and pinging people on Twitter. Outside of a text editor, he writes and reviews various publications (okay, that's may happen in a text editor, too), plays tennis and drums, collects Hot Wheels, torments his cats, and drinks too much Mountain Dew. And he's getting married in October!
You can find Aken on Twitter @cryode, on GitHub @cryode, or at his website, Cryode.com.
Tech Reviewer
Tech Reviewer & Grammar Freak
Table of Contents
-
Constructor
- Format
- Errata
- Sample Code
- About the Author
-
Chapter 1 - Never Trust Your Users. Sanitize ALL Input!
- SQL Injection
- Mass Assignment
- Typecasting
- Sanitizing Output
-
Chapter Two - HTTPS/SSL/BCA/JWH/SHA and Other Random Letters; Some of Them Actually Matter.
- What is HTTPS
- Limitations
- When to use HTTPS
- Implementing HTTPS
- Paths
-
Chapter 3 - Password Encryption and Storage for Everyone
- The Small Print
- What is a Hash?
- Popular Attacks
- A Pinch of Salt
- Hashing Algorithms
- Storage
- Validation
- Putting It All Together
- Brute Force Protection
- Upgrading Legacy Systems
- Resources
-
Chapter 4 - Authentication, Access Control, and Safe File Handing
- Authentication
- Access Control
- Validating Redirects
- Obfuscation
- Safe File Handing
-
Chapter 5 - Safe Defaults, Cross Site Scripting, and Other Popular Hacks
- Never Trust Yourself - Use Safe Defaults
- Never Trust Dynamic Typing. It’s Not Your Friend.
- Cross Site Scripting
- Attack Entry Points
- Cross Site Request Forgery
- Multiple Form Submits
- Race Conditions
- Outdated Libraries / External Programs
-
Destructor
- About the Author
- Security Audit / Consulting
- Notes
The Leanpub 60-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
Do Well. Do Good.
Authors have earned$11,978,423writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub, earning 80% royalties while saving up to 25 million pounds of CO2 and up to 46,000 trees.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Top Books
- #1
A Guide To The Future Of Hospitals
Dr. Bertalan MeskoFor centuries, scientists have been trying to envision the future of hospitals. Following the recent shift towards digital health technologies, in part precipitated by COVID-19, it is natural for one to wonder how these developments will impact hospitals. What can we expect from them in the future? Will there be hospitals at all in a decade’s time?
- #2
OpenIntro Statistics
David Diez, Christopher Barr, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel, and OpenIntroA complete foundation for Statistics, also serving as a foundation for Data Science.
Leanpub revenue supports OpenIntro (US-based nonprofit) so we can provide free desk copies to teachers interested in using OpenIntro Statistics in the classroom and expand the project to support free textbooks in other subjects.
More resources: openintro.org.
- #3
Design and Reality
Rebecca Wirfs-Brock and Mathias Verraes - #4
CCIE SP v5.0
Łukasz Bromirski, Piotr Jablonski, and Nicholas RussoAre you striving to prepare to and pass CCIE SP lab exam? Take the opportunity and get this workbook! With the attached initial cfg files you will prepare yourself for the CCIE SP exam as well as learn SP technologies applicable to all kinds of today modern networks! This workbook covers blueprint topics and provides challenging examples.
- #5
EZ Tools Manuals
Eric Zimmerman and Andrew RathbunEric Zimmerman's Tools are free, open-source, widely taught around the world. This is the official manual for all of his command line and GUI tools.
- #6
R Programming for Data Science
Roger D. PengThis book brings the fundamentals of R programming to you, using the same material developed as part of the industry-leading Johns Hopkins Data Science Specialization. The skills taught in this book will lay the foundation for you to begin your journey learning data science. Printed copies of this book are available through Lulu.
- #7
Ansible for DevOps
Jeff GeerlingAnsible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool. Learn to use Ansible effectively, whether you manage one server—or thousands.
- #8
C++20 - The Complete Guide
Nicolai M. JosuttisAll new language and library features of C++20 (for those who know previous C++ versions).
The book presents all new language and library features of C++20. Learn how this impacts day-to-day programming, to benefit in practice, to combine new features, and to avoid all new traps.
Buy early, pay less, free updates.
Other books:
- #9
Introducing EventStorming
Alberto BrandoliniThe deepest tutorial and explanation about EventStorming, straight from the inventor.
- #10
D3 Start to Finish
Peter CookD3 Start to Finish shows you how to build a custom, interactive and beautiful data visualisation using the JavaScript library D3.js (versions 6 & 7).
The book covers D3.js concepts such as selections, joins, requests, scale functions, events & transitions. You'll put these concepts into practice by building a custom, interactive data visualisation.
Top Bundles
- #1
CCIE Service Provider Ultimate Study Bundle
2 Books
Piotr Jablonski, Lukasz Bromirski, and Nick Russo have joined forces to deliver the only CCIE Service Provider training resource you'll ever need. This bundle contains a detailed and challenging collection of workbook labs, plus an extensively detailed technical reference guide. All of us have earned the CCIE Service Provider certification... - #2
Software Architecture
2 Books
"Software Architecture for Developers" is a practical and pragmatic guide to modern, lightweight software architecture, specifically aimed at developers. You'll learn:The essence of software architecture.Why the software architecture role should include coding, coaching and collaboration.The things that you really need to think about before... - #3
Pattern-Oriented Memory Forensics and Malware Detection
2 Books
This training bundle for security engineers and researchers, malware and memory forensics analysts includes two accelerated training courses for Windows memory dump analysis using WinDbg. It is also useful for technical support and escalation engineers who analyze memory dumps from complex software environments and need to check for possible... - #5
Practical FP in Scala + Functional event-driven architecture
2 Books
Practical FP in Scala (A hands-on approach) & Functional event-driven architecture, aka FEDA, (Powered by Scala 3), together as a bundle! The content of PFP in Scala is a requirement to understand FEDA so why not take advantage of this bundle!? - #8
Statistics - All Lee Baker's Books
10 Books
This bundle includes all of the statistics books that Lee Baker has published at LeanPub 13 Statistics Books*1 PlaceNo Hassle! All in both epub and mobi formats - perfect for all devices and screen sizes. --------------------------------------------------------- *The book listed as Getting Started With Statistics is a bundle of 4 books...
