Believe it or not, there is no such thing as a secure program or application, not even with all the firewalls and encryption added in it. Vulnerabilities are already present even when the program or application is still being coded by the programmer, and there is no way for a programmer to eliminate these vulnerabilities. What he or she can do is to minimize the occurrences of these vulnerabilities, which adds more security to the application or program. With programming scripts like PHP, you can also do other things that can enhance the security of both the program and its coding syntax.
The most popular programming language used by almost every programmer is PHP. It is a mortal sin in the programming world if you do not know what PHP is, or even know the basics of it. PHP is commonly used for developing web applications, yet it is not without its own security holes. These holes can actually hinder any programmer from completing the program because they need to fill it out first before continuing. In this article, I will tell you how to avoid common security pitfalls and glitches in PHP programming.
1 Proper reporting is a must – when you’re developing something using PHP, application reporting is your best friend. These error reports are important, especially when it comes to detecting wrongly spelled variables and incorrect function usage amongst many others. However, it is important to disable or hide application or error reporting once your site goes live because your users will know what’s wrong with your program instantly.
2 Disable bad features – Most developers tried to include applications that made development a lot easier. These applications have unwanted consequences like creating data validation and allowing bugs to find their way into the script. Before your site goes live, make sure you disable any of the features that would create potential errors.
3 Be vigilant of XSS attacks in user input – XSS or Cross Site Scripting is mostly seen on forums. When you are creating the option of writing input via HTML, you are allowing users to run JavaScript outside its intended purpose. When this happens, JS can create holes within your script, which will then turn off the security for the cookies. It’s like turning off the electricity in your electric fence. Once the cookies are exposed, real time data can be gathered by hackers and use this for malicious intent.
There’s no such thing as a perfect software, web application, or programming language, but you can always create something close to perfection.
