Security basics

One of the mantras of security experts is this: don't roll your own. It means you should never use in a production system any kind of crypto algorithm or security model that you developed by yourself. Always use solutions that have been highly used, tested, and recommended by trusted sources. Even experienced people may commit errors and expose a solution to attacks, especially in the cryptography field, which requires advanced math. However, when a proposed solution is analyzed and tested by a great number of specialists, errors are much less frequent.

In the security world, there is a term called security through obscurity. It is defined as a security model where the implementation mechanism is not publicly known, so there is a belief that it is secure because no one has prior information about the flaws it has. It can be indeed secure, but if used as the only form of protection, it is considered as a poor security practice. If a hacker is persistent enough, he or she can...