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Essential PHP Security

Given the remarkable popularity of PHP for developing dynamic Web sites, as well as the ever-increasing need for security on those same sites, one would think that there would be great demand for ? and comparable supply of ? books that explain how to create secure sites using PHP. However, such is not the case, and even the most extensive general purpose PHP books may only devote a single chapter to this critical topic, if that much. Essential PHP Security, written by PHP expert Chris Shiflett, aims to fill the gap.

In the introduction, Shiflett presents the security-related PHP features, principles, and best practices that he uses as a foundation throughout the rest of the book, when focusing on the specific PHP topics covered by all of the subsequent chapters. The two features of PHP discussed are: register globals, of which most experienced PHP developers know the dangers, and PHP's error reporting capabilities. The four principles espoused by the author for writing secure PHP systems are: safeguard redundancy, minimum privileges, clarity through simplicity, and minimizing data exposure. The heart of the book appears to be his four recommended practices: tempering usability with security, tracking input and output data, filtering all input, and escaping or encoding output to preserve its meaning. Slashdot | Essential PHP Security

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