I've got a directory I'm protecting with .htaccess and .htpassword but I think some people have shared the access username and password, which is against my terms. The other possibility is that they are using bruteforce. How can I use .htaccess to log the IP addresses of the people who try to access my protected directory, for both accurate and failed logins?
That is beyond the scope of .htaccess. You will need to modify your webservers configuration if it doesn't log failed logins already. (Hint: Those can be identified by the 401 response code)
Related
I know there are a lot of similar questions out there, and I've trawled them all, but I can't seem to get any of the solutions to work.
I have a folder on the root of my website containing uploaded files that can be viewed and downloaded from the site when a user is logged in. They are here: https://example.com/uploads (for example). I need the site to continue to be able to access them to display them (some are images) and provide links for download (pdfs etc) so the user can download them, but I want to avoid anyone who get's hold of the url of a particular file being able to download them directly, like this: https://example.com/uploads/2020/02/myfile.pdf. OR these urls getting into search engines (or if they do, the server prevents them from being accessed directly.
I've tried adding an .htaccess file in the uploads directory with the following content:
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1
And I've tried
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1
...as I read that might allow HTTPS calls from the site itself as well as local urls.
But it forbids the site and a direct url request, which is no good.
Is there a way to do this?
The user interface that provides the ‘official’ access to the files has user authentication, yes, but the files still exist in a directory than won’t stop anyone getting to them if they know the url.
You need to protect the files using the same authentication system that you are using to protect access to the user interface. The only way you could protect these resources by IP address (the client IP address) - as you are currently attempting in .htaccess - is if the client's IP is fixed and known in advance (but if this was the case then you wouldn't need another form of authentication to begin with).
So, this will primarily be an exercise in whatever scripting language/CMS is being used to authenticate the "user interface".
What you can use .htaccess for is to rewrite requests for these files to your server-side script that handles the authentication and then serves the file to the client once authenticated.
For example:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule ^uploads/. /serve-protected-file.php [L]
Any request for /uploads/<something> (eg. /uploads/2020/02/myfile.pdf), that maps to a valid file is routed to your script: /serve-protected-file.php.
/serve-protected-file.php would then need to do something like the following:
// 1. Parse the file being requested from REQUEST_URI
// 2. Is the requested file "protected"?
// (Serving both protected and public files from the same directory?)
// 3. If not protected then serve/stream the resource to the client. END
// 4. If protected then authenticate the user...
// 5. If user authenticated then serve/stream the resource to the client. END
// 6. Resource is protected and user not authenticated...
// Serve a 403 Forbidden. END
(Ideally, the location of these "protected" resources would be entirely outside of the document root - so they are "private" by default - and the URL the user uses to access these resources is entirely virtual - then you probably wouldn't need any additional coding in .htaccess and everything would be implemented by your front-controller - but that all depends on how your site is implemented and the way in which URLs are routed.)
I am trying to find out how secure this scenario would be.
I have a directory which I do not want anybody to ever be able to access or download the encrypted log files within the directory.
I have this directory protected by .htaccess basic authentication.
I have not set a username and password for the directory.
I have ssh key setup for my ftp client and have disabled ftp so nobody could get through to download this directory via ftp.
Since a brute force attack will not work on the directory because there are no credentials set, would this be considered a locked directory without a key and impenetrable?
If not, how would someone penetrate the directory other then guessing cpanel credentials?
Thank you for the advice.
When you protect an area of your document root using either the server configuration or .htaccess, the server prompts for a username and password when someone requests those files from a browser. If the password matches the one from the authentication provider for that user, the documentation at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/auth.html says that apache will set environment variables for that user. In my case I'm building a php app, and using phpinfo() I gather that the environment variables set are are REDIRECT_AUTHENTICATE_SAMACCOUNTNAME, AUTHENTICATE_SAMACCOUNTNAME (Using active directory as authentication provider), and REMOTE_USER. I believe this is what prevents the user from being prompted again and again on each subsequent request.
What I don't understand is how apache matches requests from a user with the environment variables set for that user, and also when and how it knows how to clear those variables. I doesn't appear to use cookies, because I cleared all the cookies for the domain in question, and still it doesn't ask me to reauthenticate unless I actually close the browser.
Ultimately I'm going to be working with php to get the userid and to maintain state, but since php is getting the information from the apache information, I'd like to know about that context, and I don't seem to be able to find these details. Thanks in advance.
Look at the http headers your browser is sending. After you have supplied a username and password, your browser will continue sending those details to that site until your browser session ends, or longer if you tell your browser to remember the credentials.
I currently have a landing page setup on my domain.com which already receives traffic.
It will shortly be replaced with an online store. I need to upload this store to my live server in order to get it approved by the Merchant Facility Providers (MFP), and they require it to be accessible from it's final live location on domain.com in order to get approvals. I can't have users access this site until it has met approvals.
To accomplish this I wish to redirect all domain.com traffic to domain.com/holding/ except for MFP visitors.
Ideally this would be restricted by IP address, however MFP say they will need to grant a number of external parties access, and so IP address based access will not be acceptable and I should use passwords.
So my question is, how can I automatically redirect all traffic from domain.com to the holding page domain.com/holding/ unless they have logged in using a password at domain.com/login?
Users visiting the domain.com should not be asked for a password.
Will this be possible using just .htaccess/.htpasswd?
If so, can someone suggest how the logic of how it could work?
It's not possible using just an .htaccess file as all visitors would be presented with an HTTP standard authentication dialog if you enabled it on your domain.com site at the doc_root level.
Without knowing what scripting language you're using? (you've not indicated in the tags, just apache), but you could provide one index page that both acts as a landing page for users/potential-users as well as provide a login (username/password form) for MFP parties (wherever they may come from).
That way, you fulfil both needs without offending or discriminating in any way against any party.
As #nickhar has pointed out, there appears to be no way of doing this using just .htaccess.
My solution was to use a rewrite rule to redirect all requests from domain.com to domain.com/holding unless a specific cookie was set (checked for using RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE}).
I set this cookie in a php script on domain.com/login, which was password protected using .htaccess/.htpasswd.
This is by no means a particularly secure solution, but is adequate for my purposes of keeping the site hidden from general traffic while the approval process is completed.
I have protected a directory where my website is placed with password (.htaccess + .htpasswd). The protection works like a charm. However, there is one problem. On the same domain I have SOLR server set up and my website uses remote connections to retrieve data from it (ie. PHP's file_get_contents). Unfortunately this does not work as it is password protected as well.
What do I do to allow my server to connect to itself without HTTP authentication? Is it possible?
Thanks a lot!
Add the line
Allow from 192.168.0.1/24
to the Auth definition. After Require valid-user is a good place. Change the ip number if necesary.