trapexit

Replace it with a Briggs and Riley bag. It won't be cheap, but they will repair it for free, for life, even if the damage was the airline's fault.

You'll also want to implement some defense against short-term replay attacks (i.e. before the token expires).

You could include a sequence number in the token, but this, of course, involves a database write, which is what you were trying to avoid in the first place.

A better approach would be to store in the database the time that the user's password was last changed, and refuse to honor any reset tokens that are timestamped prior to that time.

Not as unlikely as many people would like to think! If the two drives are from the same production lot, they may suffer from a common manufacturing defect. And because they are in the same chassis, if a server fan fails, both drives may subsequently fail due to thermal damage within a very short interval.

Even if they don't fail simultaneously, the mirror drive may fail (or even more likely) have read errors or flipped bits that will corrupt the restore or render it impossible.

Personally, I don't place much trust in any RAID configuration other than RAIDZ2 (ZFS; you can lose two drives and still recover all your data; every block is checksummed to avoid reading or restoring corrupted data).

But even ZFS can't protect you against accidental deletion, fire, theft, or earthquake.

Make sure you also set the Strict-Transport-Security header to prevent attacks against the HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect.

Intercept HTTP requests that the target site tries to redirect to HTTPS. Then proxy the HTTPS connection. If the user doesn't notice that the lock icon is missing from the URL bar, then they're being effectively MITM'd (and anyone on the WiFi can see all their traffic).

e.g.:

  1. Alice enters "paypal.com" into her browser.
  2. Alice's browser issues a request to http://paypal.com/
  3. Mallory intercepts this request, and replays it.
  4. http://paypal.com redirects to https://www.paypal.com/
  5. Mallory's proxy fetches the Paypal content and returns it to Alice
  6. Alice sees "http://www.paypal.com/... in her URL bar without the green lock, but doesn't notice.
  7. Alice enters her password.
  8. Mallory steals all her money.

A response to this attack is the "HTTP Strict Transport Security" extension implemented by modern browsers, which, for sites that enable it, prevents the browser from ever even attempting a non-encrypted connection to the site, and also prohibits bypassing the SSL certificate warning page if an unknown/invalid certificate is presented by a MITM attacker.

"Things that go boom" must be official TSA terminology. I've heard it used by screeners on multiple occasions at different airports.

They're probably not permitted to use the "b-word" out of concern for spooking passengers, much as passengers are not permitted to use the "b-word" out of concern for spooking the screeners.

... except your login cookie. :)

I don't have any hard stats, but here's some anecdata.

One of my consumer-facing websites gets lots and lots of typoed email addresses. Based on the kind of support emails I get, my impression is that the general audience of this site is borderline illiterate.

I mined the user database for common email domains where users had signed up, but never confirmed the email address by clicking on the link in the welcome email. Based on that, I created a bunch of regexps that detect the most common misspellings of gmail, yahoo, hostmail, msn, etc. I also check for things like <domain>.con, <domain>.cm, <domain>.om, and the other various typo permutations.

If the user enters a suspect email address, the system asks them whether they're sure they entered it correctly. In most cases, it will also suggest what it thinks they were trying to type: "You entered example@verzon.cm as your email address. Did you mean example@verizon.net?"

This reduced the bounce rate significantly.

For those cases where I still get a bounce to the welcome email (mistyped username, or a domain I couldn't autocorrect), I have a process that parses the bounce messages and flags the user's account as bouncing. If that flag is set, every page on the site includes a warning box that basically says "hey, your email bounced... please update your email address". When the user updates their email address, the system sends them a new confirmation email.

This email update dialog also requires the user to type their correct email address twice, because at this point they're known to be a bad typist. :) The original signup form only asks for it once, which improves conversion rates over requiring double-entry.

The combination of both of these techniques has reduced my support load for bad email address cases down to basically nothing.

Apples and oranges. You can take Virgin (shared transportation) to Seattle for $59, but try booking a private plane for SFO->SEA at that rate!

Your public transportation cost to SFO is about $10.

Most of the time, Amazon considers you to have a "soft" login. Want to view your order history? Password please. Change an order? Password. View/update addresses/credit cards? Password. This is sometimes irritating to the user, especially when clicking the "where's my stuff" link from an Amazon order email, but it serves Amazon well in that they can trace most site actions to a user account while at the same time maintaining an acceptable level of account security.

Sometimes (I believe), you will even get a password prompt for a "one click" purchase. Even if you don't, your one click purchases can only be delivered to a previously configured address, and to add a new address requires entering the credit card number again, and, of course, your password.

Thankfully, someone else did too:

http://macnix.blogspot.com/2011/07/change-mac-os-x-107-lion-...

Your bank can probably set you up for doing international wire transfers using online banking. The fees are usually substantial on both sides of the transaction, however. For smaller jobs, I usually pay foreign freelancers using PayPal.

SEEKING FREELANCER (REMOTE or Portland, OR, USA)

BDD / Ruby on Rails / HTML / CSS / jQuery / SQL / Linux

I build web apps and other business systems for my clients; looking for someone to help out or potentially take the lead on some of the projects

~40 hrs/wk for several months.

Contact info is in my profile. Please send work samples and hourly rate.

Good advice; unfortunately, I'm not actually based in the Netherlands.

I'm not looking for coaching for myself; I'm trying to help this company out by finding a local professional who can give their team some guidance.

Your email doesn't actually appear in your public profile on HN. Email me: bwb at holo dt org.