I was reading this How secure is .htaccess password protection? and reviewing the fact that one of my sites has the .htpasswd file in a web facing directory.
But, if the permissions on a .htpasswd file are correct (644), can it be accessed at all via a browser or any other means?
I guess the real question is whether or not I should follow the advice and move the .htpasswd to /home/user rather than /home/user/public_html
Related
A friend wants me to implement basic file security on his site that he can look after himself.
I think the simplest option is to put a .htaccess file into the folder he wants to protect and that will redirect all requests to a php file in the root.
The php file will then check if the user is logged in and serve the file or request a fixed shared login password.
It's going ok so far except for two problems.
Firstly I can't get the htaccess file work based on the directory it is located in - I can only manage it by hard coding the directory into the htaccess file.
Secondly, I can get the php file to know the url of the file that was requested.
Any help and pointers would be great!
It sounds like what you are wanting to do can be done a little more easily with an .htpasswd setup.
You will just place this in an .htaccess of the directory you are trying to protect and all of the sub-directories will be protected as well.
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Password Protected Area"
AuthUserFile /path/to/.htpasswd
Require valid-user
And then create an .htpasswd file and use a tool like this to generate the credentials.
Alternatively, the way you are suggesting to do it will require the use of either cookies or sessions and here is another question that should help a bit more with setting that up.
Hi.I'm new at web, and I want to create a site. I've ordered a domain name and hosting, so now I have access to storage on hosting. What have I to do to protect any folder using htpasswd?
All that I have in http folder is index.html and folder examle, that contains .htaccess and .htpasswd and example2 folder, that should be protected.
When I try to access example2 folder from browser, I get popup window, that asking me for a login and password, and when I enter it I have a 500 internal sever error
Ok, so I have the answer. It's strange that the commentators didn't undertood the error, because as I understood the 500 error has only one meaning - server can't find a file. So, communyty members again talks about everytihng they can intstead that they was asked about-_-(yes, yes, there are a lot of grammar mistakes, but you understood(I hope)).
So here are a few steps for newers, like me, that can help to protect data of your site via `.htpasswd`
Getting the correct file path
Create file in folder you need to be protected, with .php extesion, and name it, how you like. Put this code there, and save it.
<?php
echo 'Полный путь к каталогу: ';
echo $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
echo '/';
?>
Visit this page via browser, there will be wrote the full path to php document you've created.
Creating .htaccess and .htpasswd files
Go to folder you need to be protected by password and create two files - .htaccess and .htpasswd. You should notice, that these files shouldn't have any extensions, and they must be named exactly with . character in the begining.
Writing to .htaccess
Put there this one
AuthUserFile /path/to/.htpasswd
AuthType Basic
AuthName "My restricted Area"
Require valid-user
Instead of /path/to/ put the path you've got earlier. That's all
Writing to .htpasswd
Go to https://www.web2generators.com/apache-tools/htpasswd-generator and fill there login and password, and it will return you encrypted login:pass combination. Open .htpasswd file and just put it there.
That's all, it should work
An .htaccess file is uploaded to a directory via ftp, the owner and group of the said file is then generally the ftp user and / or root.
If the said directory had file permissions set to 0777 would it at all be possible for a remote script to write over the said .htaccess file, or would every attempt always be blocked as the owner and group of the .htaccess file is the ftp user (and the root), and the hacker (depending on which port they were attempting to enter through) will not be logged into the server as the ftp user (and hopefully not the root user either).
The reason I ask is because I have the need for a directory to be permissions 0777 and am concerned that the .htaccess file (which prevents scripts from running in the said directory) could simply be overwritten meaning the said server would be vunerable to attack.
Thanks,
John
Personally, I wouldn't set 0777 permissions on a directly containing a .htaccess file. In that situation I would probably advise moving the files requiring 0777 permissions into a sub directory.
You're going to be vulnerable to an attack if a script has write access to that folder regardless. Here's an example from a true story on a friend's server:
Old version of TimThumb allowed files to be uploaded maliciously
The file uploaded was Syrian Shell, a script used to decrypt user permissions and begin creating new files
Access was given to the intruder and the server was effectively turned into a host for a phishing site.
I highly recommend you take a look at your structure. Move write access to a subdirectory. Hope this helps.
Hi
Is there a way to protect a folder and its contents using .htaccess file but only from external access?
Meaning: files inside the server can access the folder but if some one tries to access it directly it prompts for an user and password.
I'm using AuthType Basic already. But when an external file tries to access the image inside the protected folder, there emerges the problem.
To clarify (at least try to), what I have is one folder with many, many images and I don't want them to be accessed but I want my php scripts to have access outside the folder. Like
/index.php
/images/ -> same level of index.php
/admin/photos/ -> index.php can access the files inside this folder without restriction. something like the files has its own user and password.
There's a couple of things you can do but I think you might want to clarify your question. I think what you're asking is how you protect certain files from web access but still allow your scripts (like a PHP script) to be able to access the data.
If that's the case then you simply need to put your data files outside of the DocumentRoot. Apache will only load files that it is allowed to access but PHP, or other scripting languages can access any file anywhere (as long as the user the process executes as has the appropriate permissions)
If you really want user/password access to certain files from the web:
AuthType Basic
AuthName "My super secret folder"
AuthUserFile "/path/to/some/user_file"
require valid-user
That will restrict outside access but will not restrict any access from scripts or people/programs on the server itself.
What are the different approaches to securing a directory?
including an index page so contents can't be viewed
the problem with this is that people can still access the files if they know the filename they're after
including an htaccess file to deny all
this seems to be the best approach, but is there any case that an htaccess file can be passed by? are there any cases as well where htaccess is not available?
restricting folder access
this is also a nice solution, but the problem is, the folder I'm trying to secure should be viewable and writable by the program.
Are there any other ways that folder security can be done?
Best practice for Apache is to use htaccess to restrict - this only restricts from the webserver - but that should be what you need. You can add authentication into this - but for most needs to you can just deny all acess - which hides the directory completely.
Another method that can also work well with using htaccess to deny direct access would be to use htaccess in your route directory to rewrite urls. This means that a request such as /example/listItems/username/ted can be rewritten as a call to a php or other file such as:
/application/index.php?module=listItems&username=ted
The advantage of doing this is that the webserver does not give out paths to any directories so it is much more difficult for people to hack around looking for directories.
If you want to protect a directory of images you could also use htaccess to redirect to a different directory so that /images/image5.png is actually a call to :
/application/images/image5.png
You could also try not placing your protected directory under your www dir but on other "non www visible" location. If your app needs to read / write data, tell it to do it on the other location. Modify its properties so only the app has the proper rights to do so.