The Curious Engineer

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The Rietta Blog on Rietta Cybersecurity

rietta.com/blog

Since 2005, this blog has covered cybersecurity, software development, and cloud migration, a resource for anyone staying informed about these areas.

SecurityRuby / RailsWeb development

Posts
240 from 8 Apr 2005 to 30 Oct 2026
Posting
monthly (21 in the last year)
Kind
company blog
Feed
https://rietta.com/blog/index.xml

2026 20

  1. Reported SSH Backdoor in Claude Code Extension Served Through Cursor
  2. Built an App with AI? Get a Security Review Before Launch
  3. What Is Title II of the ADA?
  4. When to Involve Legal Counsel in an ADA/WCAG Audit
  5. Document Provenance: Finding the Common Ancestor of Inaccessible Documents
  6. Non-Repudiation in Cybersecurity
  7. On Flock Cameras and "What Do You Have to Hide"
  8. RubyGems Open Source Supply Chain Security and OpenAI
  9. Government Rails Site Hit Hours After CVE Patch
  10. Generate OpenSSL Elliptic Curve Key Pair from the Command Line
  11. 22 Years on Firefox, and Today I'm Finally All In
  12. Meet Titan, the Rietta AI Research Lab Server
  13. Threat Modeling for ADA/WCAG Compliance
  14. The Five Pillars of Information Security (And Why We Audit Accessibility)
  15. Metadata in WordPerfect: ADA and WCAG 2.1 Compliance
  16. Real ADA Title II Findings for Government Documents
  17. 297 Days: The Real ADA Title II Deadline for Government Documents
  18. Protect Production SQL Databases from AI/LLM Agentic SQL Query Risks
  19. Beware the Sunset Trap: Why Your Legacy Software is a Ticking Time Bomb (and AI is Lighting the Fuse)
  20. Use AI to Describe Images as a Background Job in Ruby on Rails

2025 8

  1. Local AI Setup with Ollama and Nvidia GPU on Ubuntu Linux
  2. Securing the Unconnected: Air Gap Windows Application Code Review and Developer Training Success
  3. Julia Parsons, USN, Enigma Code Breaker Dead at 104
  4. Shorter SSL/TLS Lifetimes: Business Impact of Monthly Certificate Renewals
  5. The Imminent Funding Lapse of the CVE Database: A Cybersecurity Crisis
  6. Google Search Results are Increasingly Disappointing as AI Results Are Pushed
  7. Understanding Signal Messaging App Security: Is Encryption Enough?
  8. Writing Rock, Paper, Scissors in Plain JavaScript to Expose my Daughter to Development

2024 5

  1. Case Study: Complex Legacy Google Datastore Conversion to PostgreSQL on AWS
  2. A Journey From QBasic Random Access Files to PostgreSQL
  3. The UniSuper/Google Lesson: Cloud is Not a Backup!
  4. UUID as a secure API token for API RESTful endpoints? (Video)
  5. Restoring Old Software for Child Learning Safety

2023 3

  1. An Honest Conversation About Cyber Security (Video)
  2. Prioritizing cybersecurity (Pluralsight)
  3. How to win the race with hackers when new vulnerabilities are publicly disclosed!

2022 3

  1. Case Study: Migration of Public Service On-Prem to AWS Cloud
  2. Case Study: Complex Insurance Document Solution with LibreOffice, Docker, and AWS
  3. Top 5 Tips and Tricks on Developing with Docker

2021 15

  1. You Can be the Victim of a Cybersecurity Attack: Do Your Part. #BeCyberSmart.
  2. The Ripples From SolarWinds
  3. Dockerizing Development Saves Serious Money for Small Agency
  4. Paying Ransomware is Harmful: Invest in proactive defense instead.
  5. Top 5 Cyber Security Self-Defense Tips for Businesses with Custom Applications
  6. Why Rietta Appreciates Diversity
  7. Cross-site Scripting Injection Attacks Using SVG Images
  8. Lava lamps providing randomness for security!
  9. Testing: Your Future Self Will Thank You
  10. Streamlining Workflows With Docker
  11. Practical APPSEC starts with people first, processes second, and technology last
  12. Brad Cox has died
  13. Disable Low Quality Webcam Microphone in Ubuntu Linux 20.04
  14. How to Set Up and Encrypt an External SSD and Run Docker Images Externally
  15. Leading a Distributed Team with Productive

2020 14

  1. Financial Plan for a New Computer Under Warranty
  2. Development time is money, therefore I RAID
  3. Learning Object-Oriented Programming in Ruby vs C/C++
  4. Remote Team Culture - Code Review and Style Guides
  5. The convergence of Ruby on Rails and #AppSec Podcast Appearance
  6. Rietta Makes it Betta Thank You Art!
  7. Swap Files and AWS - Extending Your EC2 Free Tier Instance Memory
  8. Implementing Proper Application Maintenance Practices
  9. When Georgia was on the Brink of Outlawing Critical Computer Security Research, the Governor's Office Met with Me, and Vetoed it!
  10. Dependency Security and Hacking Rails with Jason Swett (Podcast)
  11. Snowfroc 2020 - Application Security and Development
  12. Dependency Management and Security
  13. A Newer Dev's Perspective on Learning OWASP
  14. AppSec as a Requirement in the Development Process

2019 28

  1. Xfinity is Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attacking my Internet
  2. Patch Production Faster with Security-oriented Agile Development Practices
  3. MySQL Decimal Data Type
  4. What is Web Accessibility?
  5. Acknowledge Open-Source Contributors with Git Authorship
  6. The Clean-up Refactor Deleting ".arel_tables"
  7. Why do Rietta Developers Git Fork?
  8. Ruby Gems Supply Chain Vulnerability
  9. The Case for 2FA, Post Rest-client Gem CVE
  10. What's the Difference Between the 3 Github Merge Methods?
  11. Best Data Type to store Money in MySQL?
  12. Account Protection Policies to Cover Business Assets
  13. Writing Abuser Stories
  14. Manually Editing Git Hunks: The Easy Way
  15. How to hide .gitignored Files from fzf.vim
  16. Herding Cats: The Todo List
  17. How To Use Slack To Maintain A Team Reading List
  18. Restrict Who Can Push to Matching Branches on Github
  19. Fixup your Code Reviews with git rebase --autosquash
  20. Why do teams use points to Estimate? - Interview with Lore Hamilton
  21. Are you accidentally storing private data in plain text?
  22. How to Get Fast, Accurate Code Reviews on your Pull Request
  23. How to Use git reset
  24. New Interview on Drifting Ruby
  25. How to calculate age in MySQL
  26. Applying Agile and Security in Software Development Public Appearance at KSU
  27. Storing currency in PostgreSQL
  28. Happy New Year 2019!

2018 15

  1. Prevent an Outdated and Broken bin/setup with This Simple Trick
  2. Writing a good bin/setup
  3. Automatically Migrate from Factory Girl to Factory Bot
  4. Deep Work and Remote Work
  5. Security Quick-Wins: Use DNS CAA records to avoid fraudulent certificates
  6. Automate Scheduled Security Scans With CircleCI
  7. How to Ask Great Questions Online
  8. Migrate Away from SSL/Early TLS for PCI Compliance
  9. 3 Developer Onboarding Tips From My Recent Experiences
  10. Harvest vs. Productive.io
  11. Stop Thinking about GA SB 315 in Terms of "Digital Homes"
  12. Governor Deal, veto SB 315 because white hat security researchers should be thanked not jailed!
  13. Panera Bread Story Is An Example of Why Governor Deal Should Veto SB 315
  14. Georgia SB 315, set to criminalize most independent security threat research, heads to Georgia Governor Nathan Deal for signature or veto
  15. Georgia SB 315 anti-hacking law dangerously misses the mark of protecting people, making us all less safe

2017 11

  1. Lay off the marketing plugins. Equifax hit with fake Flash update.
  2. Automated Patching Will be New Reality
  3. Southeast Ruby Conference Recap
  4. Automate Security Scans with Continuous Integration
  5. Equifax Missed Defense in Depth, Allowing a Massive Data Breach
  6. Engine Yard's 17 Rails Security Tips
  7. Troubling ISP Privacy Repeal: The Data Will be Breached
  8. Americans' Access to Strong Encryption is at Risk, an Open Letter to Congress
  9. Breach Prevention for Developers Talk at Kennesaw State University
  10. Intro to App Sec Podcast Interview
  11. The MongoDB hack and the importance of secure defaults

2016 8

  1. CPU Benchmark - Raspberry Pi vs AMD Athlon vs Mac Mini
  2. 28th Anniversary of the Morris Internet Worm
  3. Rails: Set Max Length on Fields
  4. Bad Password Practices are Responsible For Most Data Breaches. You Can do Better.
  5. Calls to Ban Effective Encryption Continue Despite Data Breach Crisis
  6. U.S. Senate Bill Seeks to Ban Effective Encryption, Making Security Illegal
  7. It is not just one iPhone, the FBI wants a future where it is impractical to deploy strong encryption without key escrow
  8. What is the difference between bcrypt and SHA256?

2015 13

  1. Ruby Application Security Talk Featured in Ruby Weekly Issue # 268
  2. What is an Abuser Story (Software)
  3. What is Application Security?
  4. The first real investor meeting post investment
  5. Uniqueness Validation Race Condition in Ruby on Rails applications
  6. 10th Anniversary Blog
  7. Adding a Rake Task for SQL Views to a Rails Project
  8. Recommended content for agile startups and entrepreneurs - March 2015 edition
  9. How to use Story Points to Estimate a Web Application Minimum Viable Product
  10. Project Roadmaps can Manage Uncertainty in Startups' Web Applications
  11. Get the Current Year in the Ruby programming language
  12. New Video! Understanding & Defending Against Data Breaches
  13. Two new videos! How a Ruby on Rails developer can help prevent a Data Breach

2014 30

  1. How To Protect Against the POODLE SSLv3 Vulnerability
  2. Commercial Information Security Classification System
  3. Government vs Security - Schneier explains
  4. Raspberry Pi crypto key management project!
  5. Free, Universal SSL with Cloudflare
  6. Software security is a moral duty
  7. Learn how Upworthy scaled a Ruby on Rails application to serve massive traffic
  8. New OpenPGP Key, 0xC004BAE3 (2014)
  9. Introduction to OpenPGP: Decrypt this Message
  10. Retake the Net for Privacy!
  11. What a Ruby developer can do to help prevent a Data Breach - 2014
  12. Humana data breach in Atlanta for an unencrypted USB disk
  13. Avoid thrashing to release your project on time and budget
  14. ModSecurity and Fail2Ban as an Intrusion Prevention System
  15. Defense in Depth
  16. Joe Moore has Pair Programmed for 27,000 Hours
  17. My new tenkeyless Code Keyboard!
  18. YubiKey Authentication Devices
  19. John Saddington and Obie Fernandez at the Atlanta Ruby Users' Group
  20. OpenSSL Vulnerability, Patch 1.0.1 Immediately
  21. Research and Development Tax Credit
  22. Find Top Referral Sources with Raw Apache Access Log
  23. Issue #6: February, 2014, Web Application Topics Newsletter
  24. Get and compare the current Git branch in BASH
  25. My Touch Typing Journey Continues
  26. Reset MySQL Root Password with One Command
  27. Anti-virus for Mac for PCI Compliance
  28. Gradually and then suddenly
  29. Why & How We Remote Pair Program (2013)
  30. Joppar's 'Tips on Securing Your Mobile App' Infographic Quoted Me!

2013 16

  1. Voice-driven Applications on the Brain
  2. How to use SQL views to Build Reports with Ruby on Rails
  3. Secure Passwords & Passphrases
  4. We Won a Hackathon with Scriptive! The Programmers' Perspective.
  5. Grep to Extract E-Mail Addresses from a Text File
  6. Upcoming Remote Pair Programming Talk at the Atlanta Ruby Users' Group
  7. Want to Learn Ruby on Rails in Atlanta?
  8. What is a Maintained Post?
  9. The Dvorak Keyboard with the Mouse on the Left-hand side
  10. Seth Godin shared that the way to success is trust on Dave Ramsey's podcast
  11. Is the Colemak or Dvorak keyboard layout best for you?
  12. What is Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) really talk by Bob Martin
  13. Happy Father's Day
  14. OpenSSL: Encrypt Data with an RSA Key with PHP
  15. Enhance Early Adoption with Mobile Friendly Themes
  16. Default HTML Values with a Rails View Helper

2012 21

  1. SQL Converter 3.4 Beta for Windows
  2. Setting up Ubuntu for Rails Development - part 2
  3. Setting up Ubuntu for Rails Development
  4. Using IPTABLES to Require CloudFlare for All HTTP/HTTPS Traffic
  5. WGET to Keep New Rails Site in Memory
  6. Atlanta Code Retreat on July 28th
  7. Really Bad Passwords (with Unsalted Hashes)
  8. Building Secure Web Applications (Info Graphic)
  9. New GIT Time Extractor Gem
  10. mod_deflate: Dramatic website speed increase with Apache compression on Ubuntu Linux
  11. Big data a big deal for SQL Server 2012, users say
  12. What is Protected Personally Identifiable Information? Do I really have to hash users' passwords?
  13. Startup Riot 2012 is done; congratulations to the winners
  14. [Rails] Good Random Positive Integer
  15. Generate OpenSSL RSA Key Pair from the Command Line
  16. Rails: Point DNS to 127.0.0.1 to Test Wildcard Subdomains on WEBrick
  17. Rails: Gmail Reply-To on Contact Form Email
  18. Wikipedia *blackout* tomorrow in protest to SOPA/PIPA
  19. Rails: TypeError: nil can't be coerced into Float
  20. OpenSSL: Encrypt a File with a Password from the Command Line
  21. Integrate Blog Content with your Rails 3 Website with Pure Ruby Code and RSS

2011 3

  1. How to automate copyright notice updates in Ruby on Rails
  2. Conditionally Including Resources on SSL or non-SSL to Avoid Mixed Content Security Warnings in Ruby on Rails
  3. Adding RANDOM alias to RAND in MySQL without Changing Ruby on Rails Code

2009 5

  1. iPhone + Mobile Camp Birmingham
  2. Web Application Security & Performance
  3. Basics of iPhone Development @ SIEGE 2009
  4. Authentication Without Encryption for Ham Radio
  5. Startup Professionals Musings: Startups: Top 10 Funding Sources

2008 1

  1. Tired of Contact Form Spam?

2007 3

  1. Software Marketing Metrics
  2. The SIC-2007 Call for Papers is Hot off the Press
  3. Happy Copyright Notice Update Day!

2006 4

  1. Georgia Tech to Compete in Network Security Contest
  2. The new City of Johns Creek
  3. Support Does Not Scale. Customer Service Does.
  4. A.R.M. Yourself Against SQL Injection

2005 14

  1. Business Analysis of Web Application Information
  2. Extend Firefox: Your Guide to Writing Firefox Extensions
  3. A product website without pricing information is really annoying!
  4. Saying no to PayPal Phishing Attacks
  5. Upcoming Beta Release: SQL Converter 2 for Excel
  6. Less is more! Google offers less talk
  7. WinZIP sold and needs technical improvements.
  8. A Little Huffman Coding with Java Tricks
  9. Re: David Bartosik: Why Robots.txt by Matt Benya
  10. Improving my personal efficiency with KDE.
  11. SWT and Swing in the News, Again.
  12. Part I: Introduction to SQL Injection
  13. Symposium and Onward; SQL Lint
  14. The Start of Something Interesting