What I've Learned From PHP Meet Up 3.0 (Part 2)

After we had lunch, the next presentation continued:

iHack Competition 2007 by FTMSK

This is an interesting area where web security is involved. Last year, I went to International Hacking Competition 2006 and see how hackers do their job.

This year, FTMSK is organizing International Hacking Competition 2007 on the 17th to 19th August 2007. RM6500 is up for grab. If I were a programmer, I might have tried my luck and participated in that event.

Oh well, if you can't reach that level, you can always become a blogger right? Being a blogger has its own advantages.

Looking at their event programme, there will be a lot of interesting talk mainly on the topic of computer security. Just by reading those geeky stuff just made my geek inside of me wanting to jump out and get back to school.

The next speaker is someone who a lot of the audience were anticipating. He is known for his ability to hack.

Web Threats by 3xb055

If you are wondering how a computer hacker looks like, you are looking at one of them. Armed with a 12 inch display laptop, 3xbo55 presented how a hacker can penetrate into your website especially when you are using any PHP based Content Management System (CMS) such as PHPBB, Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress and a whole lot more.

3xboss explains a little on why do hackers do what they do, HACK! The most popular kind of hack is called 'defaced' which is basically changing the front page of a website. There's actually a difference between 'crack' and 'hack' but we all know that a hacker is someone who can penetrate a computer or IT system and do whatever he/she wants.

The best advice 3xboss gave the audience is to check your web hosting log and look at any irregularities that is happening. If you use Linux based web hosting, your web host might use Cpanel as their dashboard management. Here's where you can check your error log:

From the log file, once you can view them, you can actually know what's going on with your web server, who's accessing and from where. It doesn't give you a lot of understandable details but 3xboss recommended we look for strange links that might have give an opportunity to be infiltrated by hackers.

The idea of sharing this information is to make a web a better place because the web is getting more of a lifestyle rather than just a tool.

Basically, computer security can become a significant issue if something happened to your computer or your password or identity got stolen. Once your confidential information is leaked out, you are prone to all kind of problems. Make sure you secure yourself because "prevention is better than cure".

You can visit 3xb055 - Bandar Baru Bangi Open Source Software Group if you want to know more about computer security and web threats.

PHP Based Web System in A Government Agency by Amin007

Amin007 works in a government agency in Muar as a PHP programmer part time. His slide is a bit different than the rest of the speaker because he revealed something rather unusual yet informative. Here's one of it "Did you know that in Muar, there is a shop who sells frog?". Amin007 confirms that its true, he even called up the shop and asked about it. Amazing what we can do with the web.

Unfortunately, a lot of his work is still offline so most of us can't really look at some of his sample. Anyway, it was good to know that PHP is useful and is used in numerous field.

The Integration of Phyton and PHP by tunbendahara

tunbendahara is a freelancer specializing in Phyton programming. His background is in C++ which makes other programming languages seem like a piece of cake to him.

I like his motto "As people, we are all lazy so we need to relax. Why work hard for yourself when you can have machine work for you". Very true indeed and that what he does.

From his talk, what I understand was he uses Phyton is for a SMS system where information is pulled from a local telco provider. He then uses PHP as the front end that will display the information in HTML viewpoint.

Object Oriented in PHP 5 by sameon

sameon works for AIST. He manages a lot of web projects for government agencies and private companies. He is also a partial owner of PHP.net.my and the organizer of this event. According to him, the food served at the event is sponsored by their first Google Adsense cheque worth about RM360. Anyhow, the talk is worth more than that despite of the free entrance.

In sameon talk, he showed the audience the differences between PHP5 and PHP4. As we all know, PHP4 will be discontinued for support by the end of this year. So, what's new on PHP 5? You can read all about it on PHP 5 Change Log.

Well, that's wrapped my report for this event. If you are interested, you can download some of the presentation here. Overall, it was a very exciting and informative event. I look forward to attend the next meet up.