Knowing that a deny from all directive will traverse all sub-directories and files below it, and ignoring the obvious caveats of "if you forget" to copy the .htaccess file or if you typo creating an .htaccess file...
Is there a risk in security between storing non-public files outside of the DocumentRoot versus placing an .htaccess file with a deny from all directive in each non-public directory in the DocumentRoot?
There are a few things to consider here:
.htaccess is only going to protect your file from access over the
web. For example, suppose you have a typical FTP server setup with
virtual users who are restricted to the document root. If an
attacker gains access to your FTP server (which is not that
far-fetched given how insecure most FTP configurations are), they
will have access to both the .htaccess file and any of your
protected files that are in the document root.
That was just one example that may not apply to your environment,
but the idea that I'm really trying to get at is that .htaccess
files don't give you that much depth in your security. They protect
you in one context (access over the Internet) but not in others.
Your server administrator has the ability to disable specific .htaccess
directives, to disable certain Apache modules (which your .htaccess file
may use), and even to disable the use of .htaccess files period. If you
don't have control over your Apache configuration (which I'm assuming
is the case since you're choosing to overwrite it with an .htaccess file),
you also don't really have control over whether your .htaccess file is going
to be respected. It really comes down to your relationship with your
host/server administrator and what they decide to allow.
Finally, if the .htaccess file is writable by the user your Apache
server is running as, a determined hacker can modified that file.
Ex. if you're using Wordpress, many popular themes will demand write
access to the .htaccess file so that they can control URL rewriting.
I'd imagine some other Content Management Systems do the same.
With all that said, using an .htaccess file (or directly altering your Apache configuration files) may still be a perfectly valid security measure for you. It depends on what your environment as a whole looks like -- how your server is configured, what you're trying to protect, etc. Hopefully I at least gave you some things to think about.
Related
I've been developing a website on a local web server and I'm pretty happy with it. I'm about ready to deploy it but I've been looking at how to limit folder access via htaccess. My concern is I grab some php variables from a document on the web server and I'm worried that by denying htaccess ill also prevent the php file from reading and writing to this document. Is this the case? If so how would I go about setting up a hierarchy in which my php can read and write to my document but people can't access the folder that its in?
.htaccess is a means to configure a server on a per-directory basis.
If you are going to be writing files using PHP, then it is going to be doing so using the file system (unless you are using HTTP PUT or similar, but you'd know if you were), so the server configuration is irrelevant.
Apache will simply forward your requests to the PHP interpreter. Once the request is past Apache, all rewrites/folder restrictions have already been validated, which means PHP never knows about them (and it shouldn't).
Htaccess is a webserver restriction, if you can access the page, then PHP doesn't care if you have it or not, so you can fopen / edit your files from PHP without problems. Of course if you write your file to a (different) directory that is htaccess protected, the user will have to insert the password to read it
Security question: Is it a good practice to name folders on the server by names that are difficult to guess (8+ symbols, not a simple "admin" or "services")? I'm asking about folders that contain not just icons or .js files or .css files, but .php files and are protected by .htaccess file (deny from all).
No. Security through obscurity isn't.
Plus it's really irritating for anybody using the machine via a shell, ftp, etc.
What would it protect against? Regardless of names, folder access should be handled by the machine's and/or network's normal security mechanisms. If they get past that, it doesn't matter what your artifacts are named–Ur PwNeD.
Good practice would be to keep your PHP files outside your web server's document root. E.g., if your doc root is /var/www, then you might have there just a single index.php file, and all that file does is launch your app:
set_include_path('/something/besides/var/www');
require_once 'foo.php';
require_once 'bar.php';
do_something();
This way, your web server doesn't even know that the PHP files exist, and can't serve them even if you have an accidentally misconfigured .htaccess.
This is security through obscurity. While there is no harm in doing it , It doesn't give anything in terms of security.
I wish to protect folder with core files of CMS and its sub folders and files from accessing via web, and I tried with .htaccess file with this:
order deny,allow
deny from all
Problem I have is that I can protect that folder but some script from that folder or its sub folder then do not work good.
I also tried with this:
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from 127.0.0.1
allow from 76.xx.xx.xx
In this case 76.xx.xx.xx is static IP of site.
Is there any way to prevent accessing files in that folder but still to make all work ok?
Another question.
I wish to secure more my site from hackers. So, is there any way to prevent injecting malicious files and code in my scripts/files and/or to block my site of executing files from other sites, hosts, to allow just working with local files.
I prefer .htaccess file, but if it is needed I have access to WHM if there is need for editing other files (but in that case I will need step by step guide). I am running site on Linux VPS with Cent-OS 5 system.
The usual way to do this is to put the accessible files in an apache-accessible directory, but all the rest into a directory out of the way from Apache. For example:
/usr/
local/
mycms/
public/
lib/
/var/
www/
mycms -> softlink to /usr/local/mycms/public
Or better yet, make mycms an alias in Apache config, pointing at the public directory. This way, the files that should be accessible are, those that shouldn't be aren't, and you can still reference all your other files simply by ../lib/ etc.
I know this does not really answer your question literally, and if the CMS directory structure is not under your control, this may not be the best way to do it.
Another way is through rewrites - simply rewrite all requests to your CMS directory except for your CMS's entry script into requests for the entry script.
"The most important safeguard is to keep uploaded files where they cannot be directly accessed by the users via a direct URL. This can be done either by storing uploaded files outside of the web root or configuring the web server to deny access to the uploads directory.
Another important security measure is to use system-generated file names instead of the names supplied by users when storing files on the file system. This will prevent local file inclusion attacks and also make any kind of file name manipulation by the user impossible"
I understand this, however - I am providing options for Wordpress users to upload files to their image directory, so I can not do either of these afaik. The files need to go into the images directory, and be named a name of their choosing.
Here is what I am doing so far:
1) Only allowing files with names with one extension, and the extension must be from a trusted list.
2) Only allowing alphanumeric, spaces and underscores in the first part of the name and less than 30 chars.
3) Not allowing files with the name .htaccess to be uploaded
4) Only allowing admin access to the upload and using wp nonces
5) Checking mime type
6) Checking file size
Some questions I have are:
If I deny uploading any file named '.htaccess' and am denying any file with .php extension, shouldn't this prevent someone from upolading an image file with .php code embedded?
I understand that I can use php to copy images without malicious code, however I am planning to allow the upload of .ttf files and .css files as well.
I could scan those files with php for script question marks, etc. Is this advisable? If so what would I search for beyond this?
If I am only allowing admins access and am using nonces and the above methodology, how secure is my code and are their other things that I should be doing?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
I thought I would bump this - having a hard time finding much feedback here.
If you do a thorough scrubbing of file names, and only whitelist image, text and css files, what kind of security does that buy you.
Currently, I am uploading as a random name in a directory, scrubbing the name, one extension, whitelisted and re-saving in a public image directory. And only allowing access by wp admins.
You should disable PHP execution in the images directory. That would prevent a lot of the potential problems you've considered without having to worry about having missed some tricky filename construction. Add php_flag engine off to the apache configuration for that directory.
Unless you really need them for some reason, you should also disable .htaccess files, at least in the images directory. Everything you can do in a .htaccess file can be done in an apache configuration file outside of any directory that might be writeable by the web server. See the AllowOverride directive.
what is htaccess file? how to create and write that? what is the advantage of using htaccess file?
.htaccess files provide a way to make configuration changes on a per-directory basis. See the official Apache documentation for .htaccess files.
.htaccess allows you to override Apache's (and other servers') main configuration file for a particular directory (and all its subdirectories). To use .htaccess you simply create a new file and name it ".htaccess" (yes, the name is very unusual because it actually consist of only a very long file extension), upload it to you server (if you want to affect your entire site than put is in your root folder), and finally add some directives.
If you wand to see what sort of things you can configure with .htaccess check out this very accessible tutorial: 5 most useful applications of the .htaccess file.
For something more comprehensive visit guide .htaccess.
Hope this helps
This is majorly used for configuration on server the generally things involve in usage are following.
-(redirecting server to specific file)
Redirect permanent /index.html (new path)
For more you can refer to http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/howto/htaccess.html#related