Twitter in a Nutshell
March 20th, 2009Securing Passwords in PHP
March 17th, 2009Privacy on your website will be paramount to your success. In the world of application development, security can sometimes be overlooked (normally because accessibility is considered more important). Luckily, modern theories in coding mean we now can now be accessible and secure.
Hashing is a really simple technique to hide data using a one way encryption. It’s especially necessary when dealing with users passwords (In a recent study, 60% of respondents use a similar passwords). Here is an example of how to hash using the MD5 function:
<?php
$password = md5('password');
// $password will now return 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99
?>
However, we can improve on this code. Many hackers now use Rainbow tables to reverse the one-way encryption (and thus find out the secret data). Luckily programmers have come up with a new technique to combat this…Adding a pinch of salt to a hash. In programming terms, a salt is essentially an extra piece of information we add to what the user input to make it unusual. Here is an example how to code this:
<?php
$salt = '%$£Salt_Here*(&^';
$password = md5('password'.$salt);
// $password will now return 5747563a265df7a3250884394c0a05e0
?>
Related Posts
PHP Security Consortium: Password Hashing
Essential PHP Security
New iPod Shuffle
March 11th, 2009
View Apple’s iPod Shuffle Website | Buy it on Amazon
I’m not sure what to make of this, either someone at Apple has gone crazy or they released it’s next wave of geniuses.
The Specifications can be found here.
Related Links
Future Stuff : 4GB iPod Shuffle in the works?
SNL Envisioned New iPod Shuffle in 2005
Apple’s redesigned iPod shuffle hits 4GB, talks to you

24/7 support which is offline, this could confuse users.


Biggest Rise: Mac (0.9%)

Related Links