SSL security in HTTP::Tiny

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:47:00 -0400

I was asked to add SSL support to a client library, while also moving from home-grown manual HTTP code to a proper module. HTTP::Tiny was ideal because it is pure-Perl, a core module since 5.14 (so it’ll be maintained), and it’s just one .pm file, making it easy to ship.

An application server that supported SSL was provided for testing purposes, but the SSL certificate didn’t match the hostname – HTTP::Tiny correctly rejected connections. I needed to be able to control the settings sent to the underlying IO::Socket::SSL object used for the encrypted connection so I could turn off security features for testing. As I worked on that, David Golden offered invaluable feedback, which greatly improved the design of the features added to HTTP::Tiny.

As of 0.018, HTTP::Tiny is more configurable, and has a simple interface for easily making SSL connections more secure.

Dist::Zilla::Plugin::Twitter gets an OAuth update

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:04:00 -0400

My pluginbundle for Dist::Zilla includes, among other things, the Twitter plugin so I can brag on Twitter every time I release a module. Mysteriously, it broke one day. Looking at the code, I realized that it was sending my username and password to authenticate. I remember being uneasy with that at the time I set it up, but I quickly forgot, and continued along blithely. OAuth is an authorization standard that allows users to avoid giving their username & password to a potentially-untrusted application. Using OAuth has been requested since 2011, and the 401 Unauthorized error I got indicates that now it is mandatory for Twitter.

David Golden offered to let me maintain the module, and I’m a sucker, so… :D

Dagolden on Hashbang.ca

SSL security in HTTP::Tiny

Dist::Zilla::Plugin::Twitter gets an OAuth update