AJAX, jQuery & how to bypass the same-origin policy

AJAX und Cross-DomainToday’s post is intended to give a brief introduction to the topic of AJAX with jQuery, as well as to cover the topic of cross domain (policy) and to show how you can use small tricks to send AJAX requests across multiple domains. Before we start, however, we will give you a quick introduction to the topic. If you are already familiar with the topic and are only interested in the AJAX cross-domain workaround, you can safely skip the first part of the article.
What is AJAX and how does it work in jQuery?
AJAX is an abbreviation and stands for “Asynchronous JavaScript And XML”. Contrary to the opinion of some people on the Internet, it is not a programming language, but rather a pattern, i.e. a way of programming something. By means of AJAX web content can be retrieved via Javascript, […]

Steganography with PHP – Hide files in images

Steganographie mit PHPIn this article we want to deal with the topic of steganography and implement a small example in PHP. Because PHP is not “only” used to create web pages or to implement forms, as any experienced PHP programmer of larger web agencies will surely confirm.
Besides functions for text processing, PHP also provides methods for image processing as well as for manipulation on bit and byte level. And these are the ones we want to use today. But before we start coding, we will have a short introduction to the topic of steganography.
Steganography is not shorthand
As the title already announced, today’s topic is steganography, the art of hiding information or knowledge in a carrier medium. Wikipedia defines steganography as follows:
Steganography (/ˌstɛɡəˈnɒɡrəfi/) is the practice of concealing a message within another message or a physical object. In computing/electronic contexts, a computer file, […]

Basics: Secure password hashing with salts

Passwörter in Plaintext speichernAnyone who develops software and especially if he/she does so in the web environment, has certainly already written one or the other login system or at least had points of contact in this area. Besides the logic of a secure login or user management system, the secure storage of passwords is one of the most important points during implementation.
Even if the actual login code is 100 percent error-free and secure (which should never be assumed in practice), security vulnerabilities in the server software can still lead to intrusions or hacks. There is always a variable that is out of one’s control and thus websites are hacked, compromised and complete databases with usernames and passwords are read every day.
In order to protect users in the best possible way in the event of such a […]

Wildcards in Google Suggest nutzen

google-suggest-theme-pictureRegular users of my blog should already be familiar with “Google Suggest”. Those can skip ahead to the section “Wildcard operator in Google Suggest”, for all others here is the quick start. Google Suggest is the name of the Google functionality that is responsible for suggesting possible search queries while you are typing your search query. For example, if you type “What are the most popular”, Google will suggest “What are the most popular sports in Australia”. The suggestions, in turn, are based on the one hand on the user’s own Google search profile and on the other hand on the most frequent search queries currently sent to Google by other users.
For webmasters, SEOs (search engine optimizers) and Internet marketers, however, the Google Suggest feature has a completely different benefit than pure […]

How to: Clear DNS cache on all kind of systems

Every few weeks I stumble across the same issue again: “How could the DNS cache be cleared again?” I admit, clearing DNS cache is not a daily task, but when it comes to it, you usually forgot the commands. That’s why the following is a short tutorial on how to empty the DNS cache in various operating systems and browsers.
Before we get to the individual solutions, I’d like to quickly explain what the DNS cache is for in the first place and when you should flush it (that’s the English term).
What is the DNS cache and when should you clear it?
The Domain Name System (DNS) is an essential service within IP-based networks, such as the Internet. If a user makes a request to a server via a program and uses a domain such as “code-bude.net”, the program first makes a request to a name server, which then determines the corresponding […]