Artur Ejsmont has a new post with a passionate call to arms for anyone who thinks that just because their URL has "https" in it, it's secure. He presents his suggestion on how to properly secure SSL API calls for your PHP application.

Lets make something clear from the very start: JUST BECAUSE THERE IS https:// IN THE URL OF THE REMOTE SERVICE IT DOES NOT MEAN THE CONNECTION IS SECURE! I am sorry for the tone of this post but i am enraged by how popular this issue is online. If you ask why i suggest a little experiment [involving changing your hosts file and using a self-signed certificate].

The issue he spotlights is all too common - a server serves up SSL pages but doesn't actually verify the certificate in the process. He gives a bad example of how some scripts handle this issue using the CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER and CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST to turn off this verification - a very bad idea. To protect yourself from any kind of man-in-the-middle or DNS hijack issues, you should leave these on.