>Number: 4215
>Category: config
>Synopsis: Better protection
>Confidential: no
>Severity: non-critical
>Priority: medium
>Responsible: apache
>State: open
>Class: change-request
>Submitter-Id: apache
>Arrival-Date: Fri Apr 9 01:40:01 PDT 1999
>Last-Modified:
>Originator: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Organization:
apache
>Release: 1.3.4
>Environment:
Linux athena.alcyonis.fr 2.0.35 #18 Fri Sep 4 16:19:31 GMT 1998 i586 unknown
>Description:
In recent editions of the httpd.conf files, these lines appear in order
to protect .htaccess files from being viewed.
<Files .htaccess>
Order allow,deny
Deny from all
</Files>
Typically a .htaccess file is created with the path to a "users" and/or "groups"
files. Since WebMasters are lazy, they tend to leave these files in the same
directory as the .htaccess file, such that a malcontent could possibly guess
this file name and harvest it.
>How-To-Repeat:
>Fix:
As a preventative measure, I recommend that following be added to the default
Apache httpd.conf in order to protect ALL hidden files (under a Unix system).
All a webmaster has to then to protect special data files is rename them as a
dot file, for example : "users" and "groups" files as ".users" and ".groups".
This also has the added benefit that
a webmaster using a dot file probably doesn't want the public looking at them.
# Dot files should stay hidden.
<FilesMatch "^\.">
Order allow,deny
Deny from all
</FilesMatch>
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:
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