About this blog - 1 minute read

This is my programming-related blog.  There are many like it, but this one is mine.  My focus is simple: sharing short, valuable pieces of information.  I'll mainly stick to the process of programming or where the industry is headed - I may occasionally include syntax or a non-programming-related items, and I'll also link to other posts that I found valuable.

When elaboration is necessary, I'll elaborate.  Otherwise, I'll let the text speak for itself.

I plan to post about twice a month.

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Optional object property access

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  Photo by Hannah Joshua on Unsplash Options: they aren't just for day traders any more! I just read a post by Dr. Axel Rauschmayer about null and undefined ( link to article ).  Here's a summary of some of the more interesting items about optional object property access and the nullish coalesce operator. The ?. operator is equivalent to "if the property exists, return it else return undefined". You can chain the ?. operator for nested objects: it will return undefined the first chance it gets. The ?? operator is like the `or` operator (||) except that it only passes through null and undefined. Examples: The ?. operator is equivalent to "if the property exists, return it else return undefined". let obj = { foo: 42 }; obj?.address // undefined obj?.foo //42 You can chain the ?. operator for nested objects: it will return undefined the first chance it gets. let users = [     { name: 'Tom', address: { line1: '1234 Main St.', line2: { city: '...
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A short guide to cross-site request forgery attacks

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Photo from Negativespace . This is a follow-on post to my post on clickjacking attacks . I found this article from Auth0 ( https://auth0.com/blog/cross-site-request-forgery-csrf/ ) while reading the one on clickjacking.  As before, it's worth reading.  Here's a summary. What CSRF attacks are CSRF, aka "c-surf", is an acronym fro Cross-Site Request Forgery.  The attack is where a malicious site uses another site's active session cookie to do something in the place of the user.  E.g. if you're logged in to your bank and go to a site in another browser tab, the other site could use the bank site's active session cookie to transfer money. How to prevent them User Log out of websites, especially sensitive ones. Back end The article and OWASP do a good job of explaining the details, so I'll link to them here and give an overview. https://auth0.com/blog/cross-site-request-forgery-csrf/ https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Cross-Site_Request_Forgery_...
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A short guide to clickjacking attacks

I recently read an article from JavaScript Weekly (part of the  Cooper Press  series I subscribe to), and it included a good rundown on clickjacking attacks: https://auth0.com/blog/preventing-clickjacking-attacks/ It's a good article and worth reading.  Here's a summary. What clickjacking attacks are Malicious sites put hidden iframes over a decoy site.  When a user tries to click on something on the decoy site, he or she actually clicks on something in the hidden iframe.  The assumption is that the action taken by the hidden iframe is malicious. How to prevent them Front end There are some workarounds, but these are mostly ineffective. Back end Note: if you're using Node.js and Express, the helmet  library does 1 and 2 by default. If both  X-Frame-Options  and  Content-Security-Policy  are set,  the CSP setting prevails . Set the X-Frame-Options header to SAMEORIGIN (helmet's default) or DENY.  This is a widely-recognized sta...
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