So I got the job. Here's a story, never let anyone stop you from accomplishing your dreams!

It all started in 2010. Windows just crashed unrecoverably for the 3rd time in two years. Back then I wasn't good with computers yet so we got our tech guy to look at it and he said: "either pay for a windows license again (we nearly spend 1K on licenses already) or try another operating system which is free: Ubuntu. If you don't like it anyways, we can always switch back to Windows!"

Oh well, fair enough, not much to lose, right! So we went with Ubuntu. Within about 2 hours I could find everything. From the software installer to OpenOffice, browsers, email things and so on. Also I already got the basics of the Linux terminal (bash in this case) like ls, cd, mkdir and a few more.

My parents found it very easy to work with as well so we decided to stick with it.

I already started to experiment with some html/css code because the thought of being able to write my own websites was awesome! Within about a week or so I figured out a simple html site.

Then I started to experiment more and more.

After about a year of trial and error (repeat about 1000+ times) I finally got my first Apache server setup on a VirtualBox running Ubuntu server. Damn, it felt awesome to see my own shit working!

From that moment on I continued to try everything I could with Linux because I found the principle that I basically could do everything I wanted (possible with software solutions) without any limitations (like with Windows/Mac) very fucking awesome. I owned the fucking system.

Then, after some years, I got my first shared hosting plan! It was awesome to see my own (with subdomain) website online, functioning very well!

I started to learn stuff like FTP, SSH and so on.

Went on with trial and error for a while and then the thought occured to me: what if I'd have a little server ONLINE which I could use myself to experiment around?

First rented VPS was there! Couldn't get enough of it and kept experimenting with server thingies, linux in general aaand so on.

Started learning about rsa key based login, firewalls (iptables), brute force prevention (fail2ban), vhosts (apache2 still), SSL (damn this was an interesting one, how the fuck do you do this yourself?!), PHP and many other things.

Then, after a while, the thought came to mind: what if I'd have a dedicated server!?!?!?!

I ordered my first fucking dedicated server. Damn, this was awesome! Already knew some stuff about defending myself from brute force bots and so on so it went pretty well.

Finally made the jump to NginX and CentOS!

Made multiple VPS's for shitloads of purposes and just to learn. Started working with reverse proxies (nginx), proxy servers, SSL for everything (because fuck basic http WITHOUT SSL), vhosts and so on.

Started with simple, one screen linux setup with ubuntu 10.04.

Running a five monitor setup now with many distro's, running about 20 servers with proxies/nginx/apache2/multiple db engines, as much security as I can integrate and this fucking passion just got me my first Linux job!

It's not just an operating system for me, it's a way of life. And with that I don't just mean the operating system, but also the idea behind it :).

Recently had an interview with a company. At some point an SELinux question came up and while I didn't provide the best answer ever (I'm hardly familiar with SELinux and mentioned that as well beforehand so they knew), it was technically correct and the reaction of the interviewers was funny.

TI (technical interviewer): say your php script isn't executed and after a while you find out that SELinux is blocking php script execution, how can you fix that?
Me: setenforce 0...? (essentially disabling SELinux at all)
TI: disabling it entirely for getting php execution to work?! That doesn't sound like a good solu...
HRI (HR (non technical) interviewer, also present): *turns to TI* - but, would it solve the problem?
TI: 😐 well, yes, but... That's a bad thing to do so I wouldn't count is corre..
HRI: *still aiming towards TI* but you simply asked him for a way to solve the php execution issue, would his answer work? Regardless of whether it's the best or worst solution, would it be a solution which works?
TI: well... yes...
HRI: then he answered correctly I'd say, next!

(yes, I'm aware that my answer wasn't good as for security at all but it would have solved that problem which is what was asked)

Guy: dot net dev (C#) on windows. (desktop + server)
Team(not his team, he just happened to sit next to us): php/frontend devs and Linux (server) people.

Team: starting a new project! We'll have to see what framework to use and what server :D
Guy: i know it's none of my business...... but I'd recommend dot net and windows server!
Me: respectfully, that hardly makes sense, you know our skillset/field... i understand that it works for you but it doesn't really for us :).
Next to that we'd rather not use windows for security reasons.

It's fine if that happens once.

When it happened for the 1748472823'th time, I had a real hard time controlling myself.

Ranted about him before but this just came to my mind again.
The fucking windows (to the max) fanboy I had to deal with for too long.

Every time I mentioned something about what programming language to use in a project he was NOT part of:
"I know it's none of my business, BUT I think you should use .net"
(All backend JavaScript and php guys).

Every time I mentioned something about what server system to use:
"I know it's none of my business but I think you should use Windows server"
(All Linux guys)

Every time I'd say something positive about Linux he'd search as long as needed to prove that that was also a windows thing (didn't even come close sometimes)

Every time I told the devs there about a windows security issue (as in "guys they found this thing, install the next update to stay safe :)" - "ahhh will do, thanks for letting know man!") he'd search as long as needed to prove that Linux also had had security issues like that.
(Okay?!? I know?!? I'm just trying to notify people so their systems stay secure and they're genuinely happy with that so STFU)

MOTHERFUCKER.

Presenting my paper on PHP Security in IEEE conference today... Wish me luck. I hope it gets published 😃🤞

Lads, I will be real with you: some of you show absolute contempt to the actual academic study of the field.

In a previous rant from another ranter it was thrown up and about the question for finding a binary search implementation.

Asking a senior in the field of software engineering and computer science such question should be a simple answer, specifically depending on the type of job application in question. Specially if you are applying as a SENIOR.

I am tired of this strange self-learner mentality that those that have a degree or a deep grasp of these fundamental concepts are somewhat beneath you because you learned to push out a website using the New Boston tutorials on youtube. FOR every field THAT MATTERS a license or degree is hold in high regards.
"Oh I didn't go to school, shit is for suckers, but I learned how to chop people up and kinda fix it from some tutorials on youtube" <---- try that for a medical position.

"Nah it's cool, I can fix your breaks, learned how to do it by reading blogs on the internet" <--- maintenance shop

"Sure can write the controller processing code for that boing plane! Just got done with a low level tutorial on some websites! what can go wrong!"

(The same goes for military devices which in the past have actually killed mfkers in the U.S)

Just recently a series of people were sent to jail because of a bug in software. Industries NEED to make sure a mfker has aaaall of the bells and whistles needed for running and creating software.

During my masters degree, it fucking FASCINATED me how many mfkers were absolutely completely NEW to the concept of testing code, some of them with years in the field.

And I know what you are thinking "fuck you, I am fucking awesome" <--- I AM SURE YOU BLOODY WELL ARE but we live in a planet with billions of people and millions of them have fallen through the cracks into software related positions as well as complete degrees, the degree at LEAST has a SPECTACULAR barrier of entry during that intro to Algos and DS that a lot of bitches fail.

NOTE: NOT knowing the ABSTRACTIONS over the tools that we use WILL eventually bite you in the ASS because you do not fucking KNOW how these are implemented internally.

Why do you think compiler designers, kernel designers and embedded developers make the BANK they made? Because they don't know memory efficient ways of deploying a product with minimal overhead without proper data structures and algorithmic thinking? NOT EVERYTHING IS SHITTY WEB DEVELOPMENT

SO, if a mfker talks shit about a so called SENIOR for not knowing that the first mamase mamasa bloody simple as shit algorithm THROWN at you in the first 10 pages of an algo and ds book, then y'all should be offended at the mkfer saying that he is a SENIOR, because these SENIORS are the same mfkers that try to at one point in time teach other people.
These SENIORS are the same mfkers that left me a FUCKING HORRIBLE AND USELESS MESS OF SPAGHETTI CODE

Specially to most PHP developers (my main area) y'all would have been well motherfucking served in learning how not to forLoop the fuck out of tables consisting of over 50k interconnected records, WHAT THE FUCK

"LeaRniNG tHiS iS noT neeDed!!" yes IT fucking IS

being able to code a binary search (in that example) from scratch lets me know fucking EXACTLY how well your thought process is when facing a hard challenge, knowing the basemotherfucking case of a LinkedList will damn well make you understand WHAT is going on with your abstractions as to not fucking violate memory constraints, this-shit-is-important.

So, will your royal majesties at least for the sake of completeness look into a couple of very well made youtube or book tutorials concerning the topic?

You can code an entire website, fine as shit, you will get tested by my ass in terms of security and best practices, run these questions now, and it very motherfucking well be as efficient as I think it should be(I HIRE, NOT YOU, or your fucking blog posts concerning how much MY degree was not needed, oh and btw, MY degree is what made sure I was able to make SUCH decissions)

This will make a loooooooot of mfkers salty, don't worry, I will still accept you as an interview candidate, but if you think you are good enough without a degree, or better than me (has happened, told that to my face by a candidate) then get fucking ready to receive a question concerning: BASIC FUCKING COMPUTER SCIENCE TOPICS

* gays away into the night

I guess that is what you get for bringing up security issues on someones website.

Not like I could read, edit or delete customer or company data...

I mean what the shit... all I did was try to help and gives me THIS? I even offered to help... maybe he got angry cause I kind of threw it in his face that the whole fucking system is shit and that you can create admin accounts with ease. No it's not a framework or anything, just one big php file with GET parameters as distinction which function he should use. One fucking file where everything goes into.

The other day we found this in our code review tool...

It's enough. I have to quit my job.

December last year I've started working for a company doing finance. Since it was a serious-sounding field, I tought I'd be better off than with my previous employer. Which was kinda the family-agency where you can do pretty much anything you want without any real concequences, nor structures. I liked it, but the professionalism was missing.

Turns out, they do operate more professionally, but the intern mood and commitment is awful. They all pretty much bash on eachother. And the root cause of this and why it will stay like this is simply the Project Lead.

The plan was that I was positioned as glue between Design/UX and Backend to then make the best Frontend for the situation. Since that is somewhat new and has the most potential to get better. Beside, this is what the customer sees everyday.

After just two months, an retrospective and a hell lot of communication with co-workers, I've decided that there is no other way other than to leave.

I had a weekly productivity of 60h+ (work and private, sometimes up to 80h). I had no problems with that, I was happy to work, but since working in this company, my weekly productivity dropped to 25~30h. Not only can I not work for a whole proper work-week, this time still includes private projects. So in hindsight, I efficiently work less than 20h for my actual job.

The Product lead just wants feature on top of feature, our customers don't want to pay concepts, but also won't give us exact specifications on what they want.
Refactoring is forbidden since we get to many issues/bugs on a daily basis so we won't get time.
An re-design is forbidden because that would mean that all Screens have to be re-designed.
The product should be responsive, but none of the components feel finished on Desktop - don't talk about mobile, it doesn't exist.
The Designer next to me has to make 200+ Screens for Desktop and Mobile JUST so we can change the primary colors for an potential new customer, nothing more. Remember that we don't have responsiveness? Guess what, that should be purposely included on the Designs (and it looks awful).
I may hate PHP, but I can still work with it. But not here, this is worse then any ecommerce. I have to fix legacy backend code that has no test coverage. But I haven't touched php for 4 years, letalone wrote sql (I hate it). There should be no reason whatsoever to let me do this kind of work, as FRONTEND ARCHITECT.

After an (short) analysis of the Frontend, I conclude that it is required to be rewritten to 90%. There have been no performance checks for the Client/UI, therefor not only the components behave badly, but the whole system is slow as FUCK! Back in my days I wrote jQuery, but even that shit was faster than the architecuture of this React Multi-instance app. Nothing is shared, most of the AppState correlate to other instances.

The Backend. Oh boy. Not only do we use an shitty outated open-source project with tons of XSS possibillities as base, no we clone that shit and COPY OUR SOURCES ON TOP. But since these people also don't want to write SQL, they tought using Symfony as base on top of the base would be an good idea.
Generally speaking (and done right), this is true. but not then there will be no time and not properly checked. As I said I'm working on Legacy code. And the more I look into it, the more Bugs I find. Nothing too bad, but it's still a bad sign why the webservices are buggy in general. And therefor, the buggyness has to travel into the frontend.

And now the last goodies:
- Composer itself is commited to the repo (the fucking .phar!)
- Deployments never work and every release is done manually
- We commit an "_TRASH" folder
- There is an secret ongoing refactoring in the root of the Project called "_REFACTORING" (right, no branches)
- I cannot test locally, nor have just the Frontend locally connected to the Staging webservices
- I am required to upload my sources I write to an in-house server that get's shared with the other coworkers
- This is the only Linux server here and all of the permissions are fucked up
- We don't have versions, nor builds, we use the current Date as build number, but nothing simple to read, nonono. It's has to be an german Date, with only numbers and has always to end with "00"
- They take security "super serious" but disable the abillity to unlock your device with your fingerprint sensor ON PURPOSE

My brain hurts, maybe I'll post more on this shit fucking cuntfuck company. Sorry to be rude, but this triggers me sooo much!

The website for our biggest client went down and the server went haywire. Though for this client we don’t provide any infrastructure, so we called their it partner to start figuring this out.
They started blaming us, asking is if we had upgraded the website or changed any PHP settings, which all were a firm no from us. So they told us they had competent people working on the matter.

TL;DR their people isn’t competent and I ended up fixing the issue.

Hours go by, nothing happens, client calls us and we call the it partner, nothing, they don’t understand anything. Told us they can’t find any logs etc.

So we setup a conference call with our CXO, me, another dev and a few people from the it partner.
At this point I’m just asking them if they’ve looked at this and this, no good answer, I fetch a long ethernet cable from my desk, pull it to the CXO’s office and hook up my laptop to start looking into things myself.

IT partner still can’t find anything wrong. I tail the httpd error log and see thousands upon thousands of warning messages about mysql being loaded twice, but that’s not the issue here.
Check top and see there’s 257 instances of httpd, whereas 256 is spawned by httpd, mysql is using 600% cpu and whenever I try to connect to mysql through cli it throws me a too many connections error.

I heard the IT partner talking about a ddos attack, so I asked them to pull it off the public network and only give us access through our vpn. They do that, reboot server, same problems.

Finally we get the it partner to rollback the vm to earlier last night. Everything works great, 30 min later, it crashes again. At this point I’m getting tired and frustrated, this isn’t my job, I thought they had competent people working on this.

I noticed that the db had a few corrupted tables, and ask the it partner to get a dba to look at it. No prevail.

5’o’clock is here, we decide to give the vm rollback another try, but first we go home, get some dinner and resume at 6pm. I had told them I wanted to be in on this call, and said let me try this time.

They spend ages doing the rollback, and then for some reason they have to reconfigure the network and shit. Once it booted, I told their tech to stop mysqld and httpd immediately and prevent it from start at boot.

I can now look at the logs that is leading to this issue. I noticed our debug flag was on and had generated a 30gb log file. Tail it and see it’s what I’d expect, warmings and warnings, And all other logs for mysql and apache is huge, so the drive is full. Just gotta delete it.

I quietly start apache and mysql, see the website is working fine, shut it down and just take a copy of the var/lib/mysql directory and etc directory just go have backups.

Starting to connect a few dots, but I wasn’t exactly sure if it was right. Had the full drive caused mysql to corrupt itself? Only one way to find out. Start apache and mysql back up, and just wait and see. Meanwhile I fixed that mysql being loaded twice. Some genius had put load mysql.so at the top and bottom of php ini.

While waiting on the server to crash again, I’m talking to the it support guy, who told me they haven’t updated anything on the server except security patches now and then, and they didn’t have anyone familiar with this setup. No shit, it’s running php 5.3 -.-

Website up and running 1.5 later, mission accomplished.

The worst project is the one I am currently working on. I didn’t build it but have to manage it, because... Reasons.

The projects is made on Core PHP(red flag right there).
But when I dig in I get to see there is no authentication used in any of the REST service. Yup. What's the fucking point of login if you are just going to update profiles based on user_id you Twat! The querying used is simply mysql_query (I have to say I expected that).
No relationships defined in the Mysql table structure. No migrations.
There is an upload feature which is forcing the image to be saved as jpeg, therby corrupting the images being saved on the server.
No security, terrible logic, no classes, terrible architecture.

And I am the chosen one to maintain this shit!

Truely, FML!!!

Hi guys, this is my first rant so bear with me..

Stupid Indian fucking institutes doesn't give a shit about the things we learn in the institute. This curriculum is like from the 90's. I learnt NodeJS recently and I thought wow a new concept, not even my professor knows about it. I must be on top of the world or at least any way near it and then I see these video tutorials on the internet which are posted 2 years ago. OH MY GOD!! The thing is that my department's HOD doesn't know about that and the funny thing is that I'm doing a project under him "SECURITY OF WEB APPLICATIONS" and the only thing he knows is PHP. And FYI I'm not studying in an institute which is oblivious to the outside world. It's called an NIT, an institute of national fucking importance. At the end, I blame myself though. I should have been on myself not being completely dependent on the professors for knowledge.
I could fill the entire text area with the rant.
But then people will start ranting about the rant.
I will be posting more Indian-devRant soon so.. peace till then.

( I bet they don't know about Git/Github too)

I showed a friend of mine a project I made in two days in Docker and Symfony php. It is a rather simple app, but it did involve my usual setup: Nginx with gzip/cache/security headers/ssl + redis caching db + php-fpm for symfony. I also used php7.4 for the lolz

He complained that he didn't like using Docker and would rather install dependencies with composer install and then run it with a Laravel command. He insisted that he wanted a non-docker installation manual.

I advised him to first install Nginx and generate some self-signed certificates, then copy all the config files and replace any environment-injected values (I use a self-made shell script for this) with the environment values in the docker-compose files.

Then I told him to download php-fpm with php 7.4 alpha, install and configure all the extensions needed, download and set up a local Redis database and at last re-implement a .env file since I removed those to replace them with a container environment.

He sent an angry emoji back (in a funny way)

God bless containerized applications, so easy to spin up entire applications (either custom or vendor like redis/mysql) and throw them away after having played with them. No need to clutter up your own pc with runtime environments.

I wonder if he relents :p

The company I interned at last summer decided to adopt a JS framework a little over a year ago. The managers went with the old Angular 1.x because they didn't want a JS build process. Each page has ~100 script tags on it, and these are manually included in various files (no automated way to include dependencies). None of the CSS/JS files are minified, either.

They really should have chose Angular 2+, or an entirely different framework (React, VueJS). They're also just now upgrading the codebase from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.2 (5.6 support ended a long time ago, and security support ends this month).

I love the company itself but these practices are poor.

I may be working there full time eventually. I hope to eventually help with the inevitable transition to a newer framework once Angular 1.x is dead since I am an avid user of newer JS technologies. Any tips on convincing manager(s) towards newer technology? (Or at least convincing them to combine+minify these files in production to reduce # of requests and bandwidth.)

Also this company's product has millions of active users.

My first job was actually nontechnical - I was 18 years old and sold premium office furniture for a small store in Munich.
I did code in my free time though (PHP/JS mostly, had a litte browsergame back then - those were the days), so when my boss approached me and asked me whether I liked to take over a coding project, I agreed to the idea.

Little did I know at the time: I was supposed to work with a web agency the boss had contracted to build their online shop. Only that he had no plan or anything, he basically told them "build me an online shop like abc(a major competitor of ours at the time)"

He employed another sales lady who was supposed to manage the shop (that didn't exist yet). In the end, I think 80% of her job was to keep me from killing my boss.

As you can imagine, with this huuuuge amout of planning and these exact visions of what was supposed to be, things went south fast and far. So far that I could visit my fellow flightless birds down in the Penguin's republic of Antarctica and still need to go further.

Well... When my boss started suing the web agency, I was... ahem, asked to take over. Dumb as I was, I did - I was a PHP kid and thought that Magento, being written in PHP, would be easy to master. If you know Magento, you know that was maybe the wrongest thing I ever said.

Fast forward 3 very exhausting months, the thing was online. Not all of it worked yet, but it was online and fairly secure.

I did next to everything myself, administrating the CentOS box the shop was running on, its (own) e-mail server, the web server, all the coding required for the shop (can you spell 12 hour day for 8 hour pay?)

3 further months later, my life basically was a wreck, I dragged myself to work, the only thing I looked forward being the motorcycle ride home. The system worked though.

Mind you, I was still, at the time, working with three major customers, doing deskside support and some admin (Win Server 2008R2 at the time) - because, to quote my boss, "We could not afford a full time developer and we don't need one".

I think i stopped coding in my free time, the one hobby I used to love more than anything on the world, somewhere Decemerish 2012. I dropped out of the open source projects I was in, quit working on my browser game and let everything slide.

I didn't even care to renew the domains and servers for it, I just let it die without notice.

The little free time I had, I spent playing video games and getting drunk/high.

December 2013, 1.5 years on the job, I reached my breaking point and just left, called in sick at least a week per month because I just could not see this fucking place anymore.

I looked for another job outside of ALL of what I did before. No more Magento, no more sales, no more PHP. I didn't have to look for long, despite what I thought of my skills.

In February 2014, I told my boss that I quit. It was still seven months until my new job started, but I wanted him to know early so we could migrate and find a replacement.

The search for said replacement started in June 2014. I had considerably less work in the months before, looks like he got the hint.

In August 2014, my replacement arrived and I got him started.

I found a job, which I am still in, and still happy about after almost half a decade, at a local, medium sized ISP as a software dev and IT security guy. Got a proper training with a certificate and everything now.

My replacement lasted two months, he was external and never really did his job - the site, which until I had quit, had a total of 3 days downtime for 3 YEARS (they were the hoster's fault, not mine), was down for an entire month and he could not even tell why.

HIS followup was kicked after taking two weeks to familiarize himself with the project. Well, I think that two weeks is not even barely enough to familiarize yourself with nearly three years of work, but my boss gave him two days.

In 2016, the shop was replaced with another one. Different shop system, different OS, different CI. I don't know why and I can't say I give a damn.

Almost all the people that worked at the company back with me have left for greener pastures, taking their customers (and revenue) with them.

As for my boss' comments, instructions and lines: THAT might not be safe for work. Or kids. Or humans in general. And there wouldn't be much left if you put it through a language filter...

Moral of the story: No, it's not a bad thing to leave a place if you're mistreated there. Don't mistake loyalty with stupidity!

And, to quote one of my favourite Bands: "Nothing matters when the pain is all but gone" (Tragedy + Time by Rise Against).

Sooo I've been working on an ancient php 5.6 project that did not have any documentation and was a homemade "framework" created 7 years ago. The original creator is long gone and no one else knows a lot about this project.

When I first looked into it I almost immediately noticed the security flaws...

Old outdated libraries
a "development" feature to easily turn dev mode on/off
BY A GET PARAMETER!

it spits out full sql queries and php warnings -.-

Oh and did I mention that the site is a webshop.... and has a backdoor password?
AND THAT THE CUSTOMER REQUESTED THAT?

I was told by my manager that I (the guy hired to be the lead developer on this project) was not a developer I was a designer and that writing php instead of using a knockoff version of dreamweever to drag and drop all of the items was an "unsecure and unsafe practice". He screamed at me for another 30 mins over this and then sent me on my way and laid me off a week and a half later after I finished the project because "we can't afford you" I was doing ITS, network and service installs, security, and web development for $10.00 an hour. #stupidboss

Well, for starters there was a cron to restart the webserver every morning.

The product was 10+ years old and written in PHP 5.3 at the time.

Another cron was running every 15 minutes, to "correct" data in the DB. Just regular data, not from an import or something.
Gotta have one of those self-healing systems I guess.

Yet another cron (there where lots) did run everyday from 02:00 to 4ish to generate the newest xlsx report. Almost took out the entire thing every time. MySQL 100%. CPU? Yes. RAM? You bet.

Lucky I wasn't too much involved at the time. But man, that thing was the definition of legacy.

Fun fact: every request was performed twice! First request gave the already logged-in client an unique access-token. Second request then processed the request with the (just issued) access-token; which was then discarded. Security I guess.

I don't know why it was build this way. It just was. I didn't ask. I didn't wanted to know. Some things are better left undisturbed. Just don't anger the machine. I became superstitious for a while. I think, in the end, it help a bit: It feels like communicating with an alien monster but all you have is a trumpet and chewing gum. Gentle does it.

Oh and "Sencha Extjs 3" almost gave me PTSD lol (it's an ancient JS framework). Followed by SOAPs WSDL cache. And a million other things.

I hacked a browser game a few years ago for fun and the exploit I found and used was basically this:

<$php

$f = $_GET['f'];
$p = $_GET['p'];

$f($p);

So it was possible to pass a function and it's parameter in the URL to the server. The author used this to include() sub pages. I to highlight_file()s.

Colleague asked me to review his code. I honor this top tier email validation.

I broke into hotels WiFi. So here's the setup
They have a main router (TP-Link) which they use for official purposes then they connected the main router to a Microtik router for guests.
I got a glimpse of the software they use for accomodation, billing etc. It runs on php stack maybe MySQL too and some ip can't remember now. I can use wireshark to sniff the packets. Basically should I tell the office of this hotel about the security? Or just let it go.

P.S: Guys you know I'm visiting my gf but I've got some time for myself as she had something to do. So you know I'm not using my laptop when I'm with her.

So.. tons of sites have their Laravel .env file accessible...

Google this: filetype:env APP_ENV

Securing a php endpoint:

if($_GET['secret'] != "qwerty") {
die();
}

Solved a complex puzzle on a website for a local ecommerce business, mind you in 16 and not really looking for a job but an unpaid internship would look beautiful on a resume or university application.

They wanted to see some of my code and give me a tour and none of them despite them being PHP developers for Magento could wrap their heads around laravel or how the routing worked. They also didn't understand and raw PHP whatsoever. I lost all faith and walked out of their office when they asked why I was using prepared statements and how they worked. That was after finding out that they don't understand cloud scalability whatsoever or common security practices.

Worst security is probably every php project I did during my teenage years...

Why do people like non typed languages like php or javascript? Besides from a giant pile of possible security problems what do you get out of it?

Imagine: It's the year 4249.

Corporate has finally managed to convince workers that they don't need a salary.
Workers are now paid with food, shelter and clothes. And it's only in effect if you achieve your deadlines.

Keystroke monitoring softwares are now replaced with Webcam eye tracking software.

GitHub Co-Pilot now takes over your code editor and tries to dictate you how to write better code.
Refusing to do results in a signal sent to the management about your behaviour and you lose food access for the day.

HR Recruiters now require you to give them a blood sample and part of your house as a security deposit.
They also require you to have a micro-chip placed in your brain so they can monitor their worker's thought process.

Switching a job is no longer an option. You pledge allegiance to one company your entire career.

You can never see the real world now because the government has mandated you to never take off your VR glasses.
You see the world the way the government wants you to see it.

PHP is still trash.

Life is Good.

I don't know if I'm being pranked or not, but I work with my boss and he has the strangest way of doing things.
- Only use PHP
- Keep error_reporting off (for development), Site cannot function if they are on.
- 20,000 lines of functions in a single file, 50% of which was unused, mostly repeated code that could have been reduced massively.
- Zero Code Comments
- Inconsistent variable names, function names, file names -- I was literally project searching for months to find things.
- There is nothing close to a normalized SQL Database, column ID names can't even stay consistent.
- Every query is done with a mysqli wrapper to use legacy mysql functions.
- Most used function is to escape stirngs
- Type-hinting is too strict for the code.
- Most files packed with Inline CSS, JavaScript and PHP - we don't want to use an external file otherwise we'd have to open two of them.
- Do not use a package manger composer because he doesn't have it installed.. Though I told him it's easy on any platform and I'll explain it.
- He downloads a few composer packages he likes and drag/drop them into random folder.
- Uses $_GET to set values and pass them around like a message contianer.
- One file is 6000 lines which is a giant if statement with somewhere close to 7 levels deep of recursion.
- Never removes his old code that bloats things.
- Has functions from a decade ago he would like to save to use some day. Just regular, plain old, PHP functions.
- Always wants to build things from scratch, and re-using a lot of his code that is honestly a weird way of doing almost everything.
- Using CodeIntel, Mess Detectors, Error Detectors is not good or useful.
- Would not deploy to production through any tool I setup, though I was told to. Instead he wrote bash scripts that still make me nervous.
- Often tells me to make something modern/great (reinventing a wheel) and then ends up saying, "I think I'd do it this way... Referes to his code 5 years ago".
- Using isset() breaks things.
- Tens of thousands of undefined variables exist because arrays are creates like $this[][][] = 5;
- Understanding the naming of functions required me to write several documents.
- I had to use #region tags to find places in the code quicker since a router was about 2000 lines of if else statements.
- I used Todo Bookmark extensions in VSCode to mark and flag everything that's a bug.
- Gets upset if I add anything to .gitignore; I tried to tell him it ignores files we don't want, he is though it deleted them for a while.
- He would rather explain every line of code in a mammoth project that follows no human known patterns, includes files that overwrite global scope variables and wants has me do the documentation.
- Open to ideas but when I bring them up such as - This is what most standards suggest, here's a literal example of exactly what you want but easier - He will passively decide against it and end up working on tedious things not very necessary for project release dates.
- On another project I try to write code but he wants to go over every single nook and cranny and stay on the phone the entire day as I watch his screen and Im trying to code.

I would like us all to do well but I do not consider him a programmer but a script-whippersnapper. I find myself trying to to debate the most basic of things (you shouldnt 777 every file), and I need all kinds of evidence before he will do something about it. We need "security" and all kinds of buzz words but I'm scared to death of this code. After several months its a nice place to work but I am convinced I'm being pranked or my boss has very little idea what he's doing. I've worked in a lot of disasters but nothing like this.

We are building an API, I could use something open source to help with anything from validations, routing, ACL but he ends up reinventing the wheel. I have never worked so slow, hindered and baffled at how I am supposed to build anything - nothing is stable, tested, and rarely logical. I suggested many things but he would rather have small talk and reason his way into using things he made.

I could fhave this project 50% done i a Node API i two weeks, pretty fast in a PHP or Python one, but we for reasons I have no idea would rather go slow and literally "build a framework". Two knuckleheads are going to build a PHP REST framework and compete with tested, tried and true open source tools by tens of millions?

I just wanted to rant because this drives me crazy. I have so much stress my neck and shoulder seems like a nerve is pinched. I don't understand what any of this means. I've never met someone who was wrong about so many things but believed they were right. I just don't know what to say so often on call I just say, 'uhh..'. It's like nothing anyone or any authority says matters, I don't know why he asks anything he's going to do things one way, a hard way, only that he can decipher. He's an owner, he's not worried about job security.

Php code without any class. Every page is a separate php file in project root folder.

Everything is all over the place, code repetition is everywhere.

The worst part? No security. The sql calls are with mysql_ functions and string concatenation. Files are just uploaded without checking.

And I had to repair it.

why people around me act like dump. i have recently worked with this site, which is written in php.

customer: (yelling) my website is hacked, fix it immediately
me : ok sir, we will restore your site immediately

after finishing talk with customer. i have checked website, there is no sign of website being hacked. i have checked server logs and website for security breach, there is no sign.

me: your website is not hacked, sir. can you please tell me where you have seen hacked page.
customer: look at those pages

after seen that page i facepalmed myself. it's a bug, person who created that page just splitted string without using any multibyte function, so page is showing with corrupted characters. i fixed it and problem solved. i have told about that bug, to the person who created that page.

me: hey you have used this function which is not able to handle multibyte characters, you should use multibyte character functions for that one.
person: every characters are the same. we shouldn't need to handle that way.

he is actually a senior developer. who don't even know the difference between unicode and ascii characters.

Indian outsourcing web companies on their websites be like:
"We provide services in IOT, Machine Learning, Data Analysis, Web security analysis, blah blah"

Me excitingly joins the company and finds out, they all are PHP developers developing unsecured websites.

My boss wants to be asynchronous with php. Then to render the backend async he wants to use beanstalk using python to be scalable.

I said : we can use node.js it's already asynchronous. And we don't care about the langage php python...

Boss : node.js isn't scalable, there is no security it's not good enough, it's not enough safe. I code with php since 15 years and it's better than node. To much problem in the node.js version 0.12.

OK BUT NOW WE HAVE NODEJS VERSION 6 LTS. WAKE UP. OMG I GIVE IT UP LET'S GO.

FUCK OPENSSL. I LOVE IT AND HATE IT SO FUCKING MUCH. WORK FASTER AND BE LESS CONFUSING SO I CAN BRAG ABOUT MY PRETTY ENCRYPTION CODE SOONER. FUCK

So I enventually spent 2 years working for that company with a strong b2b market. Everything from the checkouts in their 6 b2c stores to the softwares used by the 30-people sales team was dependant on the main ERP shit home-built with this monstruosity we call Windev here in France. If you don't know it just google and have some laugh : this is a proprieteray FRENCH language. Not french like made by french people, well that too, but mostly french like the fucking language is un fucking french ! Instructions are on french, everything. Hey that's my natural language okay, but for code, really ?

The php website was using the ERP database too, even all the software/hardware of the massive logistic installation they had (like a tiny Amazon depot), and of course the emails of all employees. Everything was just handled by this unique shitty and so sloooooow fucking app. When there was to many clients on the website or even too many salespeople connected to the ERP at the same time, every-fuckin-piece of the company was slowing down, and even worse facing critical bugs. So they installed a monitor in the corner of a desk constantly showing the live report page of Google analytics and they started panic attacks everytime it was counting more than 30 sessions on the website. That was at the time fun and sad to observe.

The whole shit was created 12 years ago and is since maintened locally by one unique old-fashion-microsoft dev who also have to maintain all the hardware of all the fucking 150+ people business. You know, when the keyboard of anyone is "broken" cause it's unplugged... That's his job too. The poor guy was totally overstressed on a daily basis and his tech knowledge just saddly losts themeselves somewhere in the way. He was my n+1 in a tech team of 3 people : him, a young and inexperimented so-called "php developer" who was in charge of the website (btw full of security holes I discovered and dealed with when I first arrive at the job), and myself.

The database was a hell of 100+ tables of business and marketing data with a ton of specific logic added on-the-go during years. No consistent data model or naming. No utf8. Fucked up relations that ends with queries long enough to fill books. And that's not all, all the customers passwords was just stored there uncrypted. Several very big companies and administrations were some of these clients. I was insisting on the passwords point litterally all the time, that was an easy security fix and a good start... But no, in two years of discussions on the subject I never achieved to have them focusing on other considerations than "our customers like that we can remind them their password by a simple phone call if they lost it". What. The. Fuck. WHATTHEFUCK!

Eventually I ran myself out of this nightmare. I had a few bad jobs already, and worked on shitty software already. But that one really blows my mind (and motivation for a time too). Happy it's over.

This is a true story. We had this subject, called “Web Design” (really, “design”), where we studied HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MySQL (confusing, right?). And when we get the PHP (e-)book, it was this old PDF (probably downloaded illegally) teaching the legacy 4.0 version of PHP. Anyway, when we had to develop the final project, the sane professor allowed us to use a newer version of PHP — 5.2, released on 2008. I had to follow the rules, so I developed probably the less secure web application I will ever develop. That means no protection from SQL injection, XSS vulnerable and a bunch of other security holes… And that’s how they liked it developed!

My internship is about to end in two months. I was under the impression that I'll start looking for a job towards mid August and then decide what to do. I didn't expect my company to offer me a position so early before my internship ended.

Initially I had liked the place. The work was pretty relaxed and I had quite a bit of freedom. Soon enough, I proved my worth and my team started respecting my opinions and suggestions. They even consulted me on multiple occasions.

The first thing I noticed on the downside was the company, despite being resourceful enough and having a decent turnover and important clients, was quite stingy in terms of employee welfare. There was no coffee. There was machine but you had to buy the capsule for yourself. And that sucks. I know I don't need to say more but the other problems were there was no enterprise subscription (or any subscription) to PhpStorm even though our team handled so many PHP projects. I know IDEs are personal preferences but not having any professional IDEs is not something to let slide. The lead dev uses NetBeans (and not because he loved it or anything). Even though I worked on WebDev and front end, I had no option to ask for a second screen. I had one display apart from my laptop. Usually most companies in Paris provides food tickets for internships and this company did not even give me that. And worst of all, there wasn't really anyone I looked up to. As much as I enjoy responsibilities and all, I don't think I should be in an environment where I have nothing much to learn from my seniors. For some fucked sense of security and certainty, I was willing to overlook all this when they offered me a position. But I recently had my interview and the regional manager, a fuck face who still makes me wonder how he reached his position, made a proposal for some quite a small amount of salary. What infuriated more than his justifications was his attitude itself. There was absolutely no respect whatsoever. It was more like "We'll give you this, I think this is more than enough for you. Take it or do whatever you want". I asked for more and he didn't even bother negotiating. I declined the offer.

Now this would have solved all the issues. But my manager and my lead dev like me a lot. Both of them are pretty nice people. They both were bothered with the fact that I had turned down the offer. My manager even agreed that the offer was too low and had already given me tips to help me negotiate. But after I turned down the offer, she went and discussed the issue with the regional manager and he offered me a new proposal. This time it was decent but still under my expectations. I'm pretty sure I can do better elsewhere. I said I need time to think about it. I get multiple advises from people to take it atleast so that I get my visa converted to a work permit. For some reason, I want to take the risk and say no. And find something else. But today my lead dev called me aside and asked me if was going to say no. He really tried to influence me by telling me a lot of good things about me and telling me about the number of different projects we're going to start next month and all that. Even though I'm fully convinced that I don't want to work here, just the sheer act of saying no to these two people I respect is sooo fucking difficult for me that I can already imagine me working here for the next one year. The worst part is I can clearly classify their words and sentences into stuff they say to canvass me, stuff they're bullshitting about and flattery just to make me stay. Despite knowing I'm being taken advantage of, some fucked up module in my head wouldn't stop guilt tripping me. I don't know what to do. If I only I could find a really better job.

Pardon the grammatical errors if any. I'm just venting out and my thoughts branch in 500 different ways simultaneously.

Comment a 1 if you’re a web dev.
Comment a 2 if you’re a game dev.
Comment a 3 if you’re a data scientist.
Comment a 4 if you’re in cyber security.
Comment a 5 if you’re in IT.
Comment a 6 if you don’t fit any of the above categories and you code only in PHP and refuse to learn any other language because you think PHP is the future.

Me : java is suck.
Friend : php is suck.
Friend2 : c++ is suck.
Friend3 : network is suck.
Friend4 : security is very suck!

All : I agree.

Ok, here goes...

I was once asked to evaluate upgrade options for an online shop platform.

The thing was built on Zend 1, but that's not the problem.

The geniuses that worked on it before didn't have any clue about best practices, framework convention, modular thinking, testing, security issues...nothing!

There were some instances when querying was done using a rudimentary excuse for a model layer. Other times, they would just use raw queries and just ignore the previous method. Sometimes the database calls were made in strange function calls inside randomly loaded PHP files from different folders from all over the place. Sometimes they used JOINs to get the data from multiple tables, sometimes they would do a bunch of single table queries and just loop every data set to format it using multiple for loops.

And, best of all, there were some parts of the app that would just ignore any ideea of frameworks, conventions and all that and would be just a huge PHP file full of spagetti code just spalshed around, sometimes with no apparent logic to it. Queries, processing, HTML...everything crammed in one file...

The most amazing thing was that this code base somehow managed to function in production for more than 5 years and people actualy used it...

Imagine the reaction I got from the client the moment I said we should burn it to the ground and rebuild the whole thing from scratch...

Good thing my boss trusted me and backed me up (he is a great guy by the way) and we never had to go along with that Frankenstein monster...

So I was assigned to improve an existing internal CMS application where they wanted the ability to add extra form applications and restricting them based on people from different departments. As well as include some other improvements like speed as they mentioned that it was slow in some instances.

What I found was the original developer decided to not use any kind of framework and decided to be creative by creating his own MVC framework. With about 300 users in this system and utilising no caching of queries, views, not even using PHP OpCache, even quite a few security holes, I was damn surprised at how this thing was running. I asked the original developer why he didn't use an open source framework and he said that he thought that he'd create something and be the next Facebook.

It was a mammoth task to "improve" this system but the main thing was that I took custody of this project and that I prevented him from trying to make a bigger mess of things for this project.

what kind of dumb fuck you have to be to get the react js dev job in company that has agile processes if you hate the JS all the way along with refusing to invest your time to learn about shit you are supposed to do and let's add total lack of understanding how things work, specifically giving zero fucks about agile and mocking it on every occasion and asking stupid questions that are answered in first 5 minutes of reading any blog post about intro to agile processes? Is it to annoy the shit out of others?

On top of that trying to reinvent the wheels for every friggin task with some totally unrelated tech or stack that is not used in the company you work for?

and solution is always half-assed and I always find flaw in it by just looking at it as there are tons of battle-tested solutions or patterns that are better by 100 miles regarding ease of use, security and optimization.

classic php/mysql backend issues - "ooh, the java has garbage collector" - i don't give a fuck about java at this company, give me friggin php solution - 'ooh, that issue in python/haskel/C#/LUA/basically any other prog language is resolved totally different and it looks better!' - well it seems that he knows everything besides php!

Yeah we will change all the fucking tech we use in this huge ass app because your inability to learn to focus on the friggin problem in the friggin language you got the job for.

Guy works with react, asked about thoughts on react - 'i hope it cease to exists along with whole JS ecosystem as soon as possible, because JS is weird'. Great, why did you fucking applied for the job in the first place if it pushes all of your wrong buttons!

Fucking rockstar/ninja developers! (and I don't mean on actual 'rockstar' language devs).

Also constantly talks about game development and we are developing web-related suite of apps, so why the fuck did you even applied? why?

I just hate that attitude of mocking everything and everyone along with the 'god complex' without really contributing with any constructive feedback combined with half-assed doing something that someone before him already mastered and on top of that pretending that is on the same level, but mainly acting as at least 2 levels above, alas in reality just produces bolognese that everybody has to clean up later.

When someone gives constructive feedback with lenghty argument why and how that solution is wrong on so many levels, pulls the 'well, i'm still learning that' card.

If I as code monkey can learn something in 2 friggin days including good practices and most of crazy intricacies about that new thing, you as a programmer god should be able to learn it in 2 fucking hours!

Fucking arrogant pricks!

My university provides advanced education courses and you'll get certified if you pass them. I'm really interested but I don't have so much time, so which one should I pick?
List of courses I'm interested in:

SQL
IT-Security
Project Management
PHP

I'm curious about your suggestions ;)

!rant but seeking für help

Hi!
So my boss came to me yesterday and asked me if I could do some penetration / security testing for a web application our company made.
Interested in learning it and being familiar with HTML, PHP, JavaScript and MySQL I said yes.
Though I have some really basic knock edge of the subject (E.g SQLInjection) I was wondering if you know any good website / udemy course or whatever that can get me started.
I don't mind if there will be a certificate at the end but it is not necessary.

Thank!

Imagine implementing PHP scripts which execute shell commands defined in URL GET query params on your customer's dedicated server without any basic authentication or similar. The only security is by barely obfuscating it's URL.
I think I've seen it all now...

That moment you call a php curl script to download files handed to it from a python script because the http request in python somehow get blocked by corporate bullshit, but you also need access to MS products for this script to work, which you can't do in PHP.

# FML
# Corporate "Security" is bullshit
# Fail, Adapt, Overcome

We support a system we inherited from another company, it’s an online document store for technical specifications of electronic devices used by loads of people.

This thing is the biggest pile of shite I’ve ever seen, it wasn’t written by developers but rather by civil engineers who could write vb...so needless to say it’s classic asp running on iis, but it’s not only written in vbscript oh god no, some of it is vb other parts is jscript (Microsoft’s janky old JavaScript implementation) and the rest is php.

When we first inherited it we spent the best part of 2 months fixing security vulnerabilities before we were willing to put it near the internet - to this day I remain convinced the only reason it was never hacked is that everything scanning it thought it was a honeypot.

We’ve told the client that this thing needs put out of its misery but they insist on keeping it going. Whenever anything goes wrong it falls to me and it ends up taking me days to work out what’s happening with it. So far the only way I’ve worked out how to debug it is to start doing “Response.AddHeader(‘debug’, ‘<thing>’) on the production site and looking at the header responses in the browser.
I feel dirty doing that but it works so I don’t really care at this point

FUCK I hate this thing!

Hello, one of the other devs on my team insists that using:

<?=$myVar?>

In a template is super dangerous but:

<?php echo $myVar?>

Is safer.

Why? Is this valid in PHP 7.3?

PHP code that didn't use sanitize, but manually checked if strings contained ' or ". Not even in a function, but manually implemented whenever the person writing that burning dumpsterfire thought it was a good idea to check for that.

Code also didn't report, it just exited without error code. Users would just get a white screen if that spaghetti code "security" system got tripped.

Just needing to vent a bit...

We start off with classic asp.net & Xamarin. K.

Then we run into the shitshow that's lackluster documentation and heavy push for asp.net core.
Whatever, will just handroll things.

K. Azure is quickly turning expensive..
Well let's find alternatives.

Yeah, no Linux ain't gonna work.
Wanna shell out for a windows server? Nah.
K. Well, let's rewrite in asp.net core then.
Nginx proxy passthrough to kestrel. Ez.

Now.. wtf is the deal with mssql behaving like a turd on Linux?
Oh now some security jibber about telemetry and adding Microsoft keys to root.

Whatever. I can do PHP & MariaDB then.

1001 things wrong about Xamarin now.
Mostly performance related.
Especially cuz custom renderers for everything.
& Abused onPropertyChanged.

Uh la la, look at that sexy thing called react native.
Hippytyhop new tool for the job.

Ugh wee, what's this ? Customer impatient & deadline for months worth in Xamarin => 1 week.

Whelp I be fudge..

I’d been working event based and freelance jobs in the security and entertainment fields for years, with odd stints as a bartender sprinkled in. My pay was mostly decent, but I had no job security, and I was more on the road than at home. A few years before this job search experience I had already realised I can’t continue on this path for ever, especially if I ever want a serious relationship (e.g. 16 weeks straight touring Europe with on avg. 16h work days pretty much every day isn’t ideal in that regard, and also really though on both body and mind). So I decided to study. As I applied in autumn, not every line of study accepted students. The closest to my interest I found was BBA in Business IT.

Fast forward 1,5 years. After moving away from my previous base due to then-gfs studies, I had also been able to accept less work. Well, there were really two reasons: I didn’t want to go on weeks long big tours anymore, and I’d had to price up on my freelance job due to reasons. I still managed to keep our household going, but not knowing when the next paycheck would be available was becoming a little too stressful. I wanted job security. So a few weeks after my wedding I scoured the internetz for positions I could apply to, and applied to a dozen or so places. They were a variety of positions I had a vague understanding of from what I’d learned at UAS: from sales to data analytics to dev… I was aware pretty much all of the applications were a long shot by best, so I expected to be ghosted…

Two of the organizations I applied to wanted to go forward with me. Both dev jobs. I can’t even remember the specifics of the other one anymore, but I do remember the interview: I got in to their office (which was ridiculously open), and got marched into a tiny conference room. The interviewer was passive-aggressive and really bombarded me with questions, not really leaving a socially awkward introvert with any time to answer. I started to get really anxious and twitchy, sweating like a pig. Just wanted out. But nooo, they wanted me to do a coding test live. So they sat me on a computer with Eclipse open, gave me an assignment and told me not to use the internet. What’s even worse is that I could literally feel the interviewer breathing down my neck when I tried to do the test. Well, didn’t happen cause I was under so much pressure that I couldn’t think at all… yeah, that was horrible.

Anyhow, the other position I really applied to because it was in my hometown and I recognised the company name from legendary commercials from the 90s - everyone in this country who watched TV in mid-to-late 90s remembers those. Anyway, to my surprise, my present day manager contacted me and wanted me to do a coding test. At the time he asked I was having a bout of fevers after fevers, not really able to get healthy. I told him that I’d do it as soon as I’m healthy. A month went by, maybe more. He asked again. Again I replied that as soon as I get healthy, but promised to do it next week the latest. I didn’t deliver on that, but the next week after that, even if I was the most feverish I had been, I did the tests. I could only finish half of them, cause I couldn’t look at a screen for long at a time and had to visit the loo every 10min or so, but apparently that was enough. Next week I was already going to the interview… oh I also googled what is PHP on the way there, since it was mentioned as a requirement and I had no idea what it was. Imagine that…

The interview itself couldn’t have been more different from the other one. We were sitting in a nice conference room with my manager and the product’s lead dev, drinking coffee, our feet on the table and talking smack. Oh, and we did play a game of NHL<insertNumber> on PS4 during the interview… it was relaxed. Of course the more serious chat was there, too, but I can only really remember how relaxed it was. When I left the interview, I had been promised the position and that I would be sent the contract to be signed as soon as the CEO had reviewed and approved it. Next day, I had signed it and some time later I started at my current job (I gave a date when I was available to start, since there was a tour still agreed upon between the interview and the start).

Oh, and the job’s pretty much like the interview. Relaxed. It’s a good place to be in, even though the pay could be better (I regularly get offers for junior positions with more pay, and mid level positions with double the pay). I do value a pleasant working environment and the absence of stress more than big munny, what can I say?

The dangers of PHP eval()

Yup. "Scary, you better make use of include instead" — I read all the time everywhere. I want to hear good case scenarios and feel safe with it.

I use the eval() method as a good resource to build custom website modules written in PHP which are stored and retrieved back from a database. I ENSURED IS SAFE AND CAN ONLY BE ALTERED THROUGH PRIVILEGED USERS. THERE. I SAID IT. You could as well develop a malicious module and share it to be used on the same application, but this application is just for my use at the moment so I don't wanna worry more or I'll become bald.

I had to take out my fear and confront it in front of you guys. If i had to count every single time somebody mentions on Stack Overflow or the comments over PHP documentation about the dangers of using eval I'd quit already.

Tell me if I'm wrong: in a safe environment and trustworthy piece of code is it OK to execute eval('?>'.$pieceOfCode); ... Right?

The reason I store code on the database is because I create/edit modules on the web editor itself.

I use my own coded layers to authenticate a privileged user: A single way to grant access to admin functions through a unique authentication tunnel granting so privileged user to access the editor or send API requests, custom htaccess rules to protect all filesystem behind the domain root path, a custom URI controller + SSL. All this should do the trick to safely use the damn eval(), is that right?!

Unless malicious code is found on the code stored prior to its evaluation.

But FFS, in such scenario, why not better fuck up the framework filesystem instead? Is one password closer than the database.

I will need therapy after this. I swear.

If 'eval is evil' (as it appears in the suggested tags for this post) how can we ensure that third party code is ever trustworthy without even looking at it? This happens already with chrome extensions, or even phone apps a long time after reaching to millions of devices.

Any professional pentesters or someone working in cybersecurity as a profession? I need some advice. The company I intern with right now wants me to test their web applications for security (they really don't care so much about security). I just wanted to know is there a standard set of procedures or a checklist that is usually followed? I know automated testing is not all that effective against web applications but what are the steps you usually take?
As of now, I have run tests and am now performing a code review but it's in PHP and I'm not really good with it. I'd like to know what more is done as a standard please.

I am not a PHP dev but this back end error message when accessing /notif looks weird.

Is this a security bug?

Doing a talk on 'Security in PHP' and live demo on web attacks and safeguard tips this Saturday. Any tips fellow Ranters...?

First job while in college... Was working for web dev team lamp set up before lamp was lamp (year was 2000).

Had deadline one week after summer vacation. Worked non stop a couple of days to get shit done and didn't make it. Got in a conflict with my manager in front of the team and I blew my steam off. Quit on the spot.

Lessons learned:

1. Don't be a fucking idiot when estimating work.
2. Be cool with other teammates, nobody cares about drama and nobody has to feel sorry for you.
3. Uhm, plan? Had entire fucking vacation to get work done. I was a fucking moron.
4. Burning out is stupid and unproductive.
5. Your manager can be as poor in management as you are. Your job is to try to make them better at it, as they have less visibility in the details.

Next job in grad school. Worked for a security company. Direct manager had the bright idea to make execs sign the change requests. WTF. Code was in Perl/php, a mess. Team rewrote back end DB access , taking over six months, or more, failing twice the deadline. After a final 48 hour burn out, we ship and get laid off the week after.

Lessons learned:

1. Don't work for dicks.
2. Don't be a dick yourself.
3. Don't work for dicks.

Third job was in silicon valley. It was a great company, and I stayed there for five years.

TL:DR linux newbie, looking for advice/links (skip to bottom for questions)

!rant
After i had been looking for a job for quite some time, a couple of months ago i got hired by "smaller" company doing web stuff. So far it have been a great place, good colleagues, and overall just having a great time!.
They seem to value me alot, so that's great!.

Anyway, yesterday i got called into a meeting - and got told they wanted me to start learning "Server stuff (linux)". That got me quite excited, because it always was something i wanted to learn - but never really got around to doing.

But i never touched a linux installation before, so i'm really on ground zero - but im not afraid, i'm a quick learner and quite efficient at googling :)

I figured i would ask here, since other people here always seems to be happy to help other people out.

So far i have manage to setup a server, install various stuff (php, mysql and so on) and done setup a couple of domains/subdomains on my server. Also got a vestacpinstallation working - so overall im quite happy so far.

I figured maybe somebody had some good links/advice for a linux newbie :).

* Performance/Security, will obviously be a big focus - anything i should look at? - any must look at?
* Monitoring tools, how do i monitor various websites running on my server? Here i'm thinking bandwitch, cpu/ram usage and so on pr site basis.
* Any other stuff i should be looking at?

Little about what the server will/should be running :)

* Centos
* vestacp
* WordPress installations only (e-commerce mainly)
* PHP 7 / MySQL / phpmyadmin

Yesterday while learning some basic php stuff, prof was telling us about text fields and how php auto converts HTML and JavaScript.

He said to test it out before class, he wrote a lil JS script and submitted it to a text field using IE and then again using Chrome.

IE let the script run no problems (big surprise) but chrome blocked the script from running.

He doesn’t use Firefox, but I just recently switched from chrome to FF so I tested it out in class on FF.

I was surprised to see FF ran the script no problem. Surprised because I made the switch because of security reasons, my partner helped me secure all my shit and we both switched to FF cause every resource suggested it.

This is just one small case that I feel isn’t a huge deal, my prof said any decent dev will strip tags or whatever, but made me think: are there any other security concerns with FF? Am I right to consider it a more secure and therefore “better” browser?

One of our clients old CMS was completely hand written, allowed execution of PHP files in the uploads directory with an uploader that was publicly accessible, and the "security" was MD5 hashed passwords. Oh and the username/password for the admin user was password.

I have read people talk about how “Laravel makes PHP fun”. I don't get it. I really hate frameworks. Yeah they may simplify tasks. But the way I see it, you now have a damn framework that you're never going to bother to understand. You most likely won't read the underlying code, you'll rely on others to release security updates.

Hey yeah it has its benefits, like peer reviewed, and matured code.

But I guess it's just not for me.

SAME GOES FOR WORDPRESS. It does freaking make your life easy, and it's easy money, but I guess it would just annoy me to not be bothered with the underlying code.

Anyway, Imma head on to make my own framework....

Well for starters the website that gave you assignments on security of web applications shouldn't have an SQL injection vulnerability on the login page.

Next would be the method of teaching, they would skip what not to do and go straight to what you should do. This in turn causes people to use the exec command in php that actually takes a POST parameter.

And stop allowing teachers to be lazy fucks that don't explain shit and only give you assignments.

And finally when telling the teacher that a method he uses would cause another vulnerability the teacher should properly fix this issue not say it is for an "advanced course".

Yes I am pissed

Magento Debugging Horror!
Changing lots of things in magento with no problem. Continuing development for quite sometime. Suddenly decide to clear cache to see affect of a change on a template in frontent. Suddenly magento crashes! There's no error message. No exception log. No log in any file anywhere on the disk. All that happens is that magento suddenly returns you to the home page!
Reverting all the changes to the template. Clear the cache. Nope! Still the same! Why? Because the problem has happened somewhere in your code. Magento just didn't face it, because it was using an older version of your code. How? Because magento 2 even caches code! Not the php opcache. Don't get me wrong. It has it's own cache for code, in a folder called generated. Now that you cleared all the caches including this folder, you just realized that, somewhere something is wrong. But there is no way for you to know where as there is absolutely no exception logged anywhere!
So you debug the code, from index.php, down to the deepest levels of hell. In a normal php code, once the exception happens, you should see the control jumps to an exception handler, there, you can see the exception object and its call stack in your debugger. But that's not the case with magento.
Your debugger suddenly jumps to a function named:
write_close();
That's all. No exception object. No call stack. No way to figure out why it failed. So you decide to debug into each and every step to figure out where it crashes. The way magento renders response to each request is that, it calls a plugin, which calls a plugin loop, which calls another plugin, which calls a list of plugins, which calls a plugin loop, which calls another plugin.....
And if in each step, just by accident, instead of step through, you use the step over command of your debugger, the crash happens suddenly and you end up with the same freaking write_close() function with no idea what went wrong and where the error happened! You spend a whole day, to figure out, that this is actually a bug in core of magento, they simply introduced after your recent update of magento core to the latest STABLE version!!! It was not your mistake. They ruined their own code for the thousandth of time. You just didn't notice it, because as I said, you didn't clear the `generated` folder, therefore using an older version of everything!
Now that after spending 7 hours figuring out what has failed with absolutely no standard way of debugging and within a spaghetti of GOTO commands (Magento calls them plugin), why not report it to github? So you report it with a pull request. This also takes 1 hour of your time. Just to next day get informed that your pull request is rejected because another person already fixed the bug and made the same pull request. It was just not on the latest stable version yet!
So you decide to avoid updating magento as much as possible. Because you know that the next Stable version will make your life and career unstable. But then the customer complains that the Admin Panel is warning him of using old Magento version which might pose SECURITY THREATS!

How was I able to fix this bullshit report generator task?

Simple bitch. I am that fucking good. Matter of fact. I am more than good. Sit the fuck down and listen.

That fucktard you have over there acting as a faculty member teaching kids about code and security? Blame that bitch for the horrible code that was NOT working since he wrote that with absolute disdain for software engineering and without taste or finesse.
Yeah I was able to troubleshoot his monster of an app. His ass is the reason why people hate php, giving the lang and community a bad name and shit.

Pleased to meet you btw.

I am Alex. Your new rockstar.

To my manager: i got it babe don't worry. I'll be your huckleberry.

I am out.

Urgh.. the amount of things you have to know as a developer.. it can get stressful and frustrating sometimes when (in-depth) technology knowledge is demanded from you (for instance, for a job position)..
It's like being a doctor, being a lifelong student.

A few examples of what I had to know during my career:
Java, .NET, Python, PHP, JavaScript/HTML5/CSS3, Sass/Less, Node.js, ReactJS, AngularJS, Vue.js, Cordova, Ionic, Android, design patterns, SOLID, databases (design, implementation, administration, both NoSQL and relational,..), deployment tools (Octopus, Jenkins,..), VCS, CI/CD, HTTP, networking, security (OAuth2, CORS, XSS, CSRF,..), algebra, algorithms, software testing, profiling, Linux, Unix, Windows, MS Office (advanced mail filtering,..), ITIL, IT Law (licensing and its implications when choosing a product, distribution right,..), server architecture,..

Sure yeah, I know, I've studied all that at university but.. it's been too long (almost a decade now). I have to revisit that knowledge.

I've been wondering about renting a new VPS to get all my websites sorted out again. I am tired of shared hosting and I am able to manage it as I've been in the past.

With so many great people here, I was trying to put together some of the best practices and resources on how to handle the setup and configuration of a new machine, and I hope this post may help someone while trying to gather the best know-how in the comments. Don't be scared by the lengthy post, please.

The following tips are mainly from @Condor, @Noob, @Linuxxx and some other were gathered in the webz. Thanks for @Linux for recommending me Vultr VPS. I would appreciate further feedback from the community on how to improve this and/or change anything that may seem incorrect or should be done in better way.

1. Clean install CentOS 7 or Ubuntu (I am used to both, do you recommend more? Why?)
2. Install existing updates
3. Disable root login
4. Disable password for ssh
5. RSA key login with strong passwords/passphrases
6. Set correct locale and correct timezone (if different from default)
7. Close all ports
8. Disable and delete unneeded services
9. Install CSF
10. Install knockd (is it worth it at all? Isn't it security through obscurity?)
11. Install Fail2Ban (worth to install side by side with CSF? If not, why?)
12. Install ufw firewall (or keep with CSF/Fail2Ban? Why?)
13. Install rkhunter
14. Install anti-rootkit software (side by side with rkhunter?) (SELinux or AppArmor? Why?)
15. Enable Nginx/CSF rate limiting against SYN attacks
16. For a server to be public, is an IDS / IPS recommended? If so, which and why?
17. Log Injection Attacks in Application Layer - I should keep an eye on them. Is there any tool to help scanning?

If I want to have a server that serves multiple websites, would you add/change anything to the following?
18. Install Docker and manage separate instances with a Dockerfile powered base image with the following? Or should I keep all the servers in one main installation?
19. Install Nginx
20. Install PHP-FPM
21. Install PHP7
22. Install Memcached
23. Install MariaDB
24. Install phpMyAdmin (On specific port? Any recommendations here?)

I am sorry if this is somewhat lengthy, but I hope it may get better and be a good starting guide for a new server setup (eventually become a repo). Feel free to contribute in the comments.

I'm on vacation.
A friend asked me if I could work on a freelance web project. I was getting bored of summer vacations so I said yes.
It was a website for online lottery and it was already developed by some freelancers.
Owner wanted more freelancers to revamp design and administration panel.

I looked at the site and knew that I had seen the worst design and code of my life.

Frontend was made of two colors only, black and yellow. Out of both, black was more prominent. Moreover it had nothing related to Js as if it was developed as a challenge to be accomplished without java script.

Admin panel and backend was much worse than that. No security practices and deprecated essential libraries.

The nightmare is about to end as I have inducted a much better design from themeforest for frontend.
Backend is in my homebrew php framework.
(Good luck future freelancers 😆)
I'm positive that next edits will be features additions only and no one will blame my code.

I have a small NUC-like machine in my home with an old external hdd connected to it. I use it to run my local gitlab, nextcloud and to test a few websites I build for the lolz.
If you too have a homelab, whether it's a single raspberry or an entire room full or racks, you know damn well that everything you have running locally as a web service keeps going until it doesn't, for whatever fucking reason. This time, it was the turn of my nextcloud.
The machine has arch linux running, I chose it since I already use it on my coding laptop and being a rolling release means I don't have to manually upgrade to a newer version, risking various fuck-ups and consequent screaming of profanity.
The downside is that arch is a bleeding-edge distro, so, despite being pretty good for what concerns security, as updates are pushed out some packages may still require legacy software to work as intended, since obviously not all developers for all packages can release simultaneously.
The problem was that php reached 8.2.x but nextcloud couldn't use anything beyond 8.1, so the highlighted solution was to download php-legacy, a package with a set of utilities which the cloud could use instead of mainline php.

Pretty easy, right? fuck my life, here we go.

I edited apache-httpd's configurations to link the new libraries, updated every reference in every virtual host that could possibly screw up the web server.

Done.

Then I went on and disabled the php-fpm mainline, creating a new systemd unit that would instead run the legacy executable and afterwards I edited nextcloud's additional configs so they use that instead.

Done, getting a bit dizzy, but I reboot everything and breathe.

At this point the migration should be complete, but wait, the server returns an error saying that the application is still trying to use php 8.2+...wait, what in the sysadmin Christ?

Back to nextcloud config, everything is set, everything else in every other fucking php-legacy and web server is fine, the old fpm service is disabled, I am confused, and why in the FUCKING FUCK is the new php-fpm unit failing to start at boot with "error 78/config - directory not found"? Hello? Am I being trolled by a shitty dual-core amazon fake NUC?
Maybe yes, cause it turns out that the unit was referencing a directory in the external hdd, which gets mounted at boot time after the unit itself starts, so nothing much, just a matter of tinkering with cron jobs, a reboot and at least this one is off my balls.

But why still isn't the server responding correctly? why? WHY?

After slamming my cock on the keyboard here and there scrolling back through all the config files I think to myself, hmmm, my gitlab is working flawlessly, well yeah, I didn't need to install the whole web stack, everything was nice and easy wrapped in a docker container...so why am I even here, why the fuck am I bothering with all this layered web-app bullshit, why don't I just run the up-to-date docker image that someone else has already set up for me, back up all the data and reupload them on the application?

Oh joy, you can't imagine, after 3...almost 4 hours of pure computer-touching the relief I had from seeing the blue web page with the "welcome to nextcloud" title.

Right now it's copying back all the files, and the external hdd is now linked to include the data folder.
Like really, everything was solved in two lines of bash.

I am still fuming, but at least I learned a valuable lesson, if you want a service up for yourself, implement it and deploy it as fucking easy straight-forward as you can, giving MAXIMUM priority to already fully-working options that are out there just waiting to be downloaded and used. I swing my scrotal sack on web-apps elegance as long as it's MY homelab in MY place.

Eat a fat dick php.

sudo pacman -Rns nextcloud
sudo systemctl disable --now php-fpm-legacy
sudo pacman -Rns php-legacy
sudo pacman -Rns $(sudo pacman -Qdtq)

Books.
Do you guys know a good book for professional PHP 7 programming, especially OOP, concepts, design patterns, abstraction, algorithms, security and data structures?
Please not that beginner stuff, I want to dive deeper into PHP 7 😁
Maybe in German or English 😋

PHP security model

P.S.: probably this one is my favorite

How much of an asshole you have to be to say the poster doesn't know PHP and bitch about "security problems" in an answer to a clearly newbie question about forms and redirection on Quora?

PHP is so insecure and vulnerable that it makes me feel unsafe. It has so many features and settings that can lead to security risks, such as register_globals, magic_quotes, and allow_url_fopen. It also has so many functions that can execute arbitrary code or commands, such as eval, exec, and system.

It is like PHP was designed by a bunch of hackers who wanted to exploit every possible loophole.

!rant
Why everyone who claim to know a lot about web security and encryptions is not able to help me check if my system is secure :/
And some try to charge me afterwards -.-"

Edit:
If they expect payment they should state that at beginning and be able to actually do something...

Hi

I am a php dev, i want to go up in position/salary increase,
i have expanded my web security experience by completing a CEH course and completed a threat modelling course, I have developed an interest in security and expanded my skill set into automation tools

Can anyone recommend any web security courses that can help me progress in my career

Any place to test the security of a web app?

Today, I found out that the webmaster for the organization I volunteer at is using a security-by-obscurity PHP implemented design for the private data of our members. I've talked with him about it, but for a variety of reasons to do with organization and workload, it won't be changing.

Fml.

Except COVID-19, Airport security is also scanning preflight requests and incoming traffic for CORS with its dated test kit (found this unused gem in an old PHP codebase):

Im always trying to learn new things. Im passionate about learning new things, especially development. So much i started a small collaboration group of developers and slack group to collaborate new projects/ideas,get to know new people, and just to learn new things from each other. The group is not language specific developers only, but mostly consists of PHP/Laravel developers at the moment, so im always trying to grow that network as much as possible, so if you would like to join my network to collaborate new ideas or to just even talk to some cool cats, ill send you an invite any day. Anyways, back to my original reason for this post. Im mid level developer who considers himself pretty knowledgeable in PHP and Laravel. Im curious to what other developers use to learn new things. Im constantly questioning my skillset and compare myself to senior developers who always blow me away with their knowledge which often makes me feel like i dont know enough. Currently I use resources such as:

-laracasts.com
-serversforhackers.com
-digital ocean articles or any textbook that wont cost me an arm and a leg lol

I mean i just want to learn about tech related stuff always but currently interested in learning specifically about development topics such as:

- Server administration because i would consider this my weakest skill set (things like provisioning,nginx/security, deployment)
- Continous Integration (as ive never been at a job that practices it)
- RESTful APIs(as ive never developed one)

and so much more but i wont waste your time with my never ending list. What resources/tools do you guys use for your learning?

Symfony 4:

I created a firewall with a user provider and everything was great for a year and a half.
I needed a second firewall with a different user provider for my REST API.

Being stateless, the rest api firewall didn't need the refreshUser method so I didn't bother doing anything inside but returning user (without noticing how my original class was built or the official documentation which apparently says I need to throw an exception if this isn't the right user provider for the user in the session).

I was having a problem with my main firewall after that point because I assumed it would only use the relevant user provider, but even though my API firewall only applied to a specific host/pattern, the user provider for that firewall was still being used. If it had run the supports method first, it wouldn't have done that even with my initial mistake. Frankly, I don't know why there is a supports method if it's not being utilized for this purpose...I saw supports() is used for the rememberme functionality, but seems inconsistent not to use it everywhere.

Not only should Symfony be updated to check the supports() method, but I also think it should only loop through user providers for the current applicable firewalls. Since we define a user provider per firewall, I think that would be the natural way for it to work. Otherwise why even define a user provider on the firewall if it's just going to try to use them all anyway?

Furthermore, in the case of a stateless firewall, requiring the refreshUser method via the interface seems strange.

So... I got a simple task of choosing the best fitting NIDS/MIDS, as well as deploying it, configuring to fit a specific use case and monitor its outputs for one client at work today...

I'm a little... Anxious. At a first glance, setting up like... Snort... Doesn't seem all that difficult, but I have no idea where this takes me and if what I come up with will ultimately be useful or not... Until now I did simple service configuration changes like apache, nginx, php... And a bit of database management with things like mariadb, mysql, postgresql, mongo or elastic... I feel so... Out of my usual waters.

Do you guys thing a person without a title in network security (or... Any title for that matter) can even manage this?...

how hard is it to set up a wordpress site? i hate to ask but am too busy just to try.

i always build everything from scratch, but my mother constantly asks for a new website providing wp-templates as examples. none of my past fancy features were used so i am a bit tired of putting in the effort. is it worth it or would i just create technical debt? what about security concerns, updates and upwards-compatibility with new php versions to come?

This tuesday I saw a really badly made PHP web application. Two actually. I was giving a time estimate for how long it would take to transfer these applications to our servers. While I was reading the code it became apparent that they had more security holes than Emmental cheese. Most views had obvious SQL-injection vulnerabilities and most probably XSS too. Although I didn't think too look for XSS in the moment. It just puzzled me that this bad code even exists.

But cherry on top was that the password wasn't checked at all. The login form was on the organization's website and was sent to the selected application. But the password wasn't checked in the application. And this was made by a real Finnish software development firm, like what the fuck.

Time to redo the applications I guess. Not like there's anything wrong in that if they pay for it.

That moment the client want the job done with php with lots of advanced features and security.

In no time, I just claim to be an internet marketer.

Just name your variables:
...
$6511513766a513cab6ca628098f9cc24 = ...
$689dbc13b1848936f81ddd607eaeb569 = ...
$6ae11661178a761ab1263de1786762b3 = ...
$928ec0279424ef02f6e69fbd97e72cb9 = ...
$3335fe407464b8902032b89657b35f7d = ...
$4924b36e3440d3ff6bf3a4733bca4e43 = ...
$7447d37e259d1189c9baa756b44f903f = ...
$5e6e7cd6d0a7010aed0315264af2c65f = ...
$0bcb4da51bbd710c0c1da816fe266ecc = ...
$fc1c388526a028c98e859f5e68105282 = ...
...
...and your app is super secure.

i do the website for this association and had the urge to overhaul everything, implement decent architecture and security, getting rid of awful php/html mixture. considered everything pretty fly and after going live did some minor adjustments primarily in the admin section. like instead of selecting the last 100 logs, all from the last year.

turned out there were 16 logins to the site within the last year. two board member logins (one person). impressive considering all of the functionality for administering the association it was capable of even before the rework.

so we do need a website, everyone wants to be updated, board administration is annoying but fuck my software?

more visitors than all of my other projects though.