Intermediate terms
Path Normalisation Bypass
PHP 5.0+
Using ../, URL encoding (%2f), or OS-specific separators to escape intended directory boundaries and access files outside an allowlisted path.
CWE-22 OWASP A1:2021
6mo ago
Security intermediate
7.5
Path Traversal
PHP 5.0+
3
User input used in a file path allows attackers to navigate outside the intended directory using ../ sequences.
CWE-22 OWASP A3:2021
6mo ago
Security intermediate
7.5
PDO
PHP 5.1+
2
PHP Data Objects — a database abstraction layer supporting prepared statements across multiple database drivers.
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
Penetration Testing
PHP 5.0+
4
A simulated cyberattack against a system, conducted by security professionals, to identify exploitable vulnerabilities before attackers do.
6mo ago
General intermediate
PHP Deployment Pipeline
PHP 5.0+
A complete CI/CD pipeline for PHP — from push to production — covering lint, test, build, staging deploy, smoke test, and production release.
6mo ago
DevOps intermediate
PHP Error Levels & error_reporting
PHP 5.0+
2
PHP's graduated error severity system from E_NOTICE to E_ERROR, controlled by error_reporting and display_errors INI directives.
OWASP A5:2021
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
PHP Extensions Overview
PHP 5.0+
3
PHP's functionality is extended via C extensions — bundled (PDO, cURL, mbstring) or PECL (Redis, Xdebug, Imagick) — loaded via php.ini.
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
PHP References (&$var)
PHP 5.0+
References allow multiple variables to point to the same value — powerful but a frequent source of hard-to-debug side effects.
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
PHP Session Performance & Locking
PHP 5.0+
4
PHP's file-based sessions acquire an exclusive lock per request — blocking concurrent requests from the same user until the lock is released.
6mo ago
Performance intermediate
PHP-FPM
PHP 5.3+
7
PHP FastCGI Process Manager — a high-performance PHP process manager that manages worker pools for web servers like Nginx.
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
php.ini Security Settings
PHP 5.0+
13
Critical php.ini directives that harden PHP applications by disabling dangerous features and restricting runtime behaviour.
OWASP A5:2021
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
PHPCS + PHPStan in CI (Workflow Guide)
PHP 5.0+
4
Running PHP_CodeSniffer for style and PHPStan for type/logic errors as separate CI steps — each catching a distinct class of problem.
6mo ago
Style intermediate
PHPStan Levels 0–9 Explained
PHP 7.1+
7
PHPStan's 10 strictness levels — from basic undefined variable checks (0) to full generic type inference and strict mixed handling (9).
6mo ago
Style intermediate
Predictable Token
PHP 7.0+
1
Tokens generated with md5(time()) or rand() are trivially guessable because their entropy source is predictable.
CWE-338 OWASP A2:2021
6mo ago
Security intermediate
7.5
preg_match() / preg_replace()
PHP 5.0+
2
PHP's PCRE regex functions — powerful but prone to ReDoS if patterns are not carefully constructed.
6mo ago
PHP intermediate
Preload, Prefetch & Preconnect
HTML5
1
Browser resource hints that instruct the browser to fetch resources earlier than it would discover them — reducing latency for critical assets and future navigation.
6mo ago
Frontend intermediate
Primitive Obsession
PHP 5.0+
1
Using raw strings, ints, and arrays to represent domain concepts instead of small dedicated value objects.
6mo ago
Code Quality intermediate
Principle of Least Privilege
PHP 5.0+
3
Every component should operate with the minimum permissions required to do its job — nothing more.
6mo ago
General intermediate
Privilege Escalation
PHP 5.0+
1
A flaw that lets a lower-privileged user gain higher access — e.g. reading an admin role from a URL parameter.
CWE-269 OWASP A1:2021
6mo ago
Security intermediate
8.8
Processes vs Threads
PHP 7.0+
2
Processes are independent execution units with separate memory; threads share memory within a process — threads are lighter but require synchronisation to be safe.
6mo ago
Concurrency intermediate