Posts on PHP.
5 posts tagged "PHP".
Scope the MySQL user first: the newsletter DDL as a security boundary on cPanel
On shared hosting, you don't control the firewall or the infrastructure. What you do control is which privileges the MySQL user holds. Scoping it to the newsletter schema alone made a compromised endpoint's blast radius structurally finite — not as a mitigation layered on top, but as a property of the design.
Six PHP classes, no Composer: a cPanel newsletter backend with enumeration-resistant auth
The captainrandom.co.uk newsletter backend runs on a cPanel shared host with zero framework and no Composer. Six small PHP classes, around 600 lines, and an eight-stage subscribe pipeline that tells the caller nothing about whether an email address already exists.
I hand-wrote the newsletter backend in PHP. The threat model is the code.
The captainrandom newsletter subscription backend is 600 lines of PHP, six classes, no framework, no Composer. Every security decision — rate limits, honeypots, time-traps, token hygiene — lives in the endpoint files, readable end-to-end in one sitting. That's the trade: no ecosystem, but a threat model you can hold in your head.
The confirm link token was in five places before the subscriber clicked it
Building newsletter confirm and unsubscribe handlers revealed a leak surface most developers overlook: tokens passed via GET end up in browser history, Referer headers, and server access logs before any mutation happens. The fix is an interstitial — show a page on GET, mutate only on POST.
No Composer, no autoloader: the newsletter backend cPanel rewarded
The deployment target was a cPanel shared host with FTP access. Composer wants SSH or a committed vendor directory. Neither fits cleanly on shared hosting. The alternative was require_once, six PHP classes, and a 190-line schema that doubles as documentation. Six sprints in, the backend is completely understood.