I have my .htaccess file, and I have a folder with config files in there, and they contain sensitive content, e.g. database details etc. What I would like to know is, how can I block access from a browser, but allow them to be accessed via my scripts?
I know that this can be achieved inside the PHP files themselves, but I'd rather use the .htaccess approach where possible.
Is this actually able to be done? I've attempted it before, but in the process of denying access to the file from the browser, it also denied access from the coding.
I have looked into this before, and some of the answers I came across suggested changing the extension to something like .inc, and then denying access to that. However, a couple of issues I have with that is that a) It instantly alerts anyone that can see that filename, for whatever reason, that it is a config file. Also, b) If my denial code breaks, browsers will not parse it as a PHP file, but rather an inc file, meaning it will print the code in the browser.
Basically, can this be done within a .htaccess file, or do I need to put something in the header of every config file?
Put these files outside of your web server's document root.
You can still access them via your server-side scripts, but this ensures no direct access to them from the outside world.
The conventional advice is to place such files "outside of your web server's document root". This is all well and good, but many shared hosting offerings only give write access to your public_html directory.
I use a simple convention: any private content (that is not URI addressable) is prefixed by an underscore or in a directory that's name is prefixed with an underscore (eg. _private or _include). I then include this rewrite rule in my DOCROOT .htaccess file:
# if a forbidden directory or file name (starting with a . or /)
# then raise 404 Fatal return
RewriteRule (^|/)[_.] - [F]
Remember that you'll need to prefix with a RewriteEngine On and/or include this at the top of any .htaccess file with the engine enabled.
Note that the "." prefix picks up files such as .htaccess.
Please use a framework, these kind of issues just doesn't need to exist. If you insist though, write a .htaccess to redirect every request to a single index.php in the root directory, which then have more logic to determine whether or not the request is for a valid file and include them, otherwise generate 404 or 403. If you need performance for static files, then use RewriteCond to exclude specific directories or file type from the index.php check.
Related
I want to secure and hide my asset folder from publicity. I hear that can be done with the .htaccess file and change the name from my directory-name to random name of the directory and in that case, users can't know the real name of my directory placed into my public_html. Can someone help me with examples of all kinds of documentation? I didn't try anything because I have really bad knowledge of .htaccess coding. Any help will be thankful.
Well, you can do this, but I'm curious as to the purpose if it's just to casually "hide" the underlying file directory? This doesn't really offer any additional "security" and can also cause issues if you have a front-end proxy that is intended to serve static content. It can also be problematic if you are using a CMS like WordPress as you may need to modify the default behaviour. (Although there may be other developmental issues for which you would choose to do this.)
Ideally, you would do something like this with the Alias directive in the main server config (or vHost container).
In .htaccess you can internally rewrite the request using mod_rewrite. Lets's say you are referencing /assets in the URL, but the actual filesystem directory that this should map to is /secret then you could do the following to simply forward all requests to /secret:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^assets/(.+) secret/$1 [L]
Only requests for /assets/<something> will be forwarded. A request for /assets or /assets/ will simply result in a 404 (assuming this directory does not actually exist).
To be more selective and only forward requests for specific file types, based on the file extension, then you could do something like the following:
RewriteRule ^assets/(.+\.(?:jpg|webp|gif|css|js))$ secret/$1 [L]
You could also check to see whether the target file actually exists before rewriting, but this is generally unnecessary and best avoided since filesystem checks are relatively expensive.
In my yii project i have Changelog and Licence text files. I know about RBAC and applied it on every Controller but how can i prevent any guest user to view these text files. As till now anyone can view this.
I have used this in my htaccess file
<Files ~ "(.txt)">
Order allow, deny
Deny from all
</Files>
But this is worked for txt file and these files have no extension
You can block access to all the files without extension using this rule in your site root .htaccess or Apache config/vhost file:
RewriteEngine On
# If the request is for a valid file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
# if there is no extension then block
RewriteRule ^[^.]+$ - [F]
You question is a little board, and so the answer is a little general. but there are a couple approaches;
option 1. remove the Changelog and Licence files? if these are yii install changelog and licence then they dont need to be left on the server. just ensure you complying with the licence requirements.
option 2.
you mentioned "guest user" which htaccess is not going to integrate well with yii for authorized users. you could move the files into a folder with a .htaccess containing a single line Deny from all. this blocks everyone except the PHP executed on your server.
you can now create a method/action in a controller which just echos the file contents. file-get-contents or readfile. wrap this your authentication so only non-guest users are able to use the method.
if there are only two static files, then maybe just an 'action' for each. if its many files that are changing names etc, then you accept an id to the controller pass to a model that uses scandir and checks the file really exists and spits out your output to view.
option 2.1
instead of folder with a .htaccess you could also move the files to the parent of the webhost base dir if you have this access. this means that your webserver can not serve the file, but the php can still reach it with local paths.
option 3
in .htaccess you can use AuthType basic and will invoke your webserver to prompt the user for username and password as configured in the .htaccess. this is problematic as the interface is not user friendly and is very difficult to integrate with your webapps user db.
option 4
.htaccess can support other AuthTypes but option 2 becomes much easier at this point.
I am extremely new to the concept of .htaccess, and I wanted to know how I could use it to allow a file to be used on a script on a .html file in the same directory as the .htaccess and the file. However, if you try to navigate to the file instead of viewing the script on the .html file, I would like it to be blocked. Thanks!
Update: Please see below comments!
Update 2: It seems that there is no way to achieve what I wished. That's ok, though. I just used a bunch of obfustication, and that seems to work well.
You are wanting to restrict access to a (script)file using htaccess so that a visitor can't directly link to the script file. Assuming this is working like described the visitor would load the HTML-file, the HTML-file would render and request the scriptfile....which will be blocked. So this isn't the way to go I reckon.
I would suggest changing the HTML-file to PHP when possible and include the script with a php include/require. This way the server-side code will determine what content is served.
Once you're including the file server-side you can prevent direct access to the file using htaccess by placing the code below inside your htaccess:
#Prevent Users From Accessing .inc* files in .htaccess
<Files ~ ".inc">
Order allow,deny
Deny from all
</Files>
In the above example direct access to .inc-files will be denied. Change this file-extension to your needs.
Inside your index.php file you'll need to include the file containing your script with something like:
include 'filewithscript.inc';
This should solve your problem.
I have an xml file on the server containing details to the database server. I don't want anyone to be able to access it via url but PHP should be able to load the file
Two ways:
Simple move all those kinds of files outside the webroot, for example /application instead of /public_html/myapplication. You only need accessible pages (index.php etc.) inside the webroot.
Or if that's not possible/too hard, add this in .htaccess in the folder that contains the XML file (but it cannot contain files that should be accessible)
.
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from All
you could use .htaccess file: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/htaccess.html
but, why put it in XML? put it in PHP as variables, then even if they visit the page they won't be able to see it.
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.