The Backend Engineering Show with Hussein Nasser

This is an honest video about burnout and what a content creator can do to avoid it creating content on YouTube. Support my work on PayPal https://bit.ly/33ENps4

In this episode of the backend engineering show, I'll discuss long polling technique of backend communication. I will also touch upon Polling and Pushing too and the pros and cons of each. * Intro 0:00 * Polling 2:45 * Pushing 6:30 * Long Polling 18:00 * SSE 23:00 Support my work on PayPal https://bit.ly/33ENps4 Become a Member on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_ML5xP23TOWKUcc-oAE_Eg/jo...

In this episode of the Backend Engineering show, we will go through the new features in Postgres 14. Here is a rundown of improvements made to the database platform with timestamps. 0:00 Intro 2:20 Performance 18:50 Data Types and SQL 23:00 Administration 32:30 Replication and Recovery 35:47 Security Postgres 14 Beta 1 https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/postgresql-14-beta-1-released-2213/ Suppo...

In this episode of the Backend Engineering Show, I’ll explain the OSI Model with an example. I start with the physical layer which is often ignored moved up to the application layer, presentation layer, session layer, transport layer, IP layer, and data link layer. I believe every software engineer should understand the OSI Model as it helps cement the fundamental understanding of networking appli...

In today's show, I discuss the nature of communications in database systems and how the pattern completely changed with 3-tier web architecture. I also discuss whether multiplexing protocols such as HTTP/2 and QUIC can help elevate some of the inefficiencies introduced. * Intro 0:00 * Communication Protocols 2:00 * 3 Web Tier Architecture 8:00 * Connection Pooling 14:50 * Database Connection Multi...

DST Root CA X3 Expires on September 2021, a ROOT certificate that signs Let's Encrypt Certificate authority, a very popular CA. In this video, I will discuss the ramification of this change. Support my work on PayPal https://bit.ly/33ENps4 Become a Member on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_ML5xP23TOWKUcc-oAE_Eg/join 🧑‍🏫 Courses I Teach https://husseinnasser.com/courses 🏭 Backend Engi...

Salesforce services went down as a result of a DNS update, let us discuss how can tiny DNS unavailability cause a severe outage of 5 hours. From salesforce "On May 11, 2021, at approximately 21:08 Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), the Salesforce Technology team became aware of a service disruption across Salesforce production instances. The disruption impacted the ability for users to log into the...

In this show, I go into detail on how HAProxy achieved 2 million HTTP requests per second. This is a very well-written article that discusses how the HAProxy team benchmarked the product on a 64 core ARM machine leading to over 2 million requests per second. There are many components and low-level points that I try to elaborate on, timestamps below.  0:00 Intro  2:40 Summary of the Artic...

In this show, I discuss why we have 3 data models in database systems, OLTP (Online Transactional Processing) OLAP (Online Analytical Processing), and HTAP (Hybrid Transactional Analytical Processing). I’ll also explain the difference between them, the use of ETL tools (extract transform load) to load data from transactional to analytical databases, and what is the future of HTAP. Support my work...

Watch this if you are using IP Address validation in both NodeJS and Python, these two libraries strip leading zeros which can lead to server side request forgery. Let us discuss Resources https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/critical-netmask-networking-bug-impacts-thousands-of-applications/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/python-also-impacted-by-critical-ip-address-valida...

In this video, I’ll discuss the Pingback attack, a new clever attack that uses both DLL files through Oracle Component Interface (OCI.dll) and ICMP protocol to deliver commands between the victim machines and the command center.  Resources  https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/new-pingback-malware-using-icmp.html  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Control_Message_Protocol  ht...

In this podcast I’ll explain the message queues, the request response pattern and the publish subscribe pattern. I will also illustrate the main differences between them and when to use over another. 0:00 Intro 0:30 Message Queues in 60 Seconds 1:24 When to Use Message Queues? 14:33 Request Response Pattern 20:00 Request Response Pros & Cons 24:11 Publish Subscribe Pattern in 60 Seconds 25:13...

502 Bad Gateway is one of the most infamous errors on the backend, it usually means “hey something wrong with your backend server” but it doesn’t really give enough information.  In this video,  I’ll go through details on why proxies and gateways like NGINX and HAProxy should consider throwing more fine detailed HTTP error codes.   502 Bad Gateway The server was acting as a&nbs...

In this episode I’ll talk about how VPN works, networking, IPSec and will also discuss the benefits of VPN and what happens when a VPN is hacked?   * Intro 0:00   * How Networking Works? 2:20   * How VPN Works? 10:00   * VPN Benefits 17:50  * What happens when VPN is hacked 20:20 Support my work on PayPal https://bit.ly/33ENps4 Become a Member on YouTub...

There is an ongoing situation with the Linux kernel community and the University of Minnesota Department of Computer Science & Engineering. We discuss this in this episode and I give my opinion  

Auth0 went down on April/20/2021 and this is the early report. Let us discuss. This incident affects: Auth0 US (PROD) (User Authentication, Machine to Machine Authentication, Multi-factor Authentication, Management API), Auth0 US (PREVIEW) (User Authentication, Machine to Machine Authentication, Multi-factor Authentication, Management API), and Management Dashboard (manage.auth0.com). 0:00 Update...

Let us discuss the complexity behind this trojan hack, the multi-layer approach of hiding the RAT (remote access trojan) is absolutely genius. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics https://blog.malwarebytes.com/malwarebytes-news/2021/04/lazarus-apt-conceals-malicious-code-within-bmp-file-to-drop-its-rat/

Few vulnerabilities in WhatsApp for Andriod discovered that allow an attacker to send an HTML file attachment full access to the user's media, voice notes, pictures, and eventually chat messages (through TLS session resumption keys). In this video, we will discuss the scope of this attack. The vulnerabilities have been patched by facebook. Full article from CENSUS labs discussing in detail how to...

Leaky abstractions occur when the consumer of the abstraction started asking questions about certain behavior which ends up with the need to understand the details behind the abstraction. Joel Spolsky coined this term and in this video I’d like to discuss this concept and provide few examples of my own experience towards leaky abstractions. Let us get on with the show. 6:00 Postgres Dead Tuples 7:...

Two weeks ago the PHP source code git server got hacked and two malicious commits were made to the source code. Since then the PHP maintainers identified the source of the hack, let us discuss

Light episode today let's have some fun with Q&A, I collected some questions on Twitter and YouTube community and I'm going to attempt to answer them here. Support my work on PayPal https://bit.ly/33ENps4 Become a Member on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_ML5xP23TOWKUcc-oAE_Eg/join 🧑‍🏫 Courses I Teach https://husseinnasser.com/courses

In this episode, we will discuss NULLs in database systems. I’ll go through the following: What is Null? NULLs persistence Whether you store a 0 or 2 billion value in the field 32bit integer field it costs 32 bit when you store a NULL in 32 bit integer field we save 32 bit but add overheads When NULLs are naughty Semantics and inconsistent result Select count(*). Includes nulls count(column) ignor...

The open web application security project is a recognized entity that helps developers identify critical security vulnerabilities to build secure web applications. In this video I will go through the 10 vulnerabilities and explain each one and give examples and anecdotes from real life examples. 0:00 Building Secure Backends 2:30 Injection 4:50 Broken Authentication 6:43 Sensitive Data Exposure 11...

Caching is the hardest problem in building software, and having the browser cache is not any different. In this video, I'll discuss Jake Archibald's article https://jakearchibald.com/2016/caching-best-practices/ 0:00 Intro 2:00 Pattern 1: Immutable content + long max-age 5:40 Pattern 2: Mutable content, always server-revalidated 8:00 max-age on mutable content is often the wrong choice 12:20 CDN a...

Write Amplification Is a phenomenon where the actual writes that physically happen are multiples of the actual writes desired. In this episode, I'll discuss 3 types of write amplifications and their effects on performance and lifetime of storage mediums. 0:00 intro 2:00 Application write amplification 4:30 Database write amplification 9:30 SSD Disk write amplification 16:00 SSD hates BTrees 20:00...