Home » Search results for "htaccess"
If you have files on your site that you don't want indexed by malicious search engines, grabbed and leeched by malicious spammers, or stolen and made available elsewhere, you can use mod_rewrite to drastically reduce or totally reduce that activity.
Note: Extremely ILL Content
Find the key to unlocking mod_rewrite and you WILL be sick.. sick with a diamond disease on your wrist!
Web Developers sometimes use file.ext?v=004 as a version control system to force visitors to use updated files. This is terrible. Instead link to apache-003.css and set it to be cached forever. When you change the file you just change the links to apache-004.css. That eliminates millions of bandwidth and resource robbing If-Modified-Since requests. You only need Apache with mod_rewrite, and 1-10 minutes!
So my blog as been rather quiet for almost a year now, and very few updates if any have been released for my Password Protection PLugin, my Google 404 Plugin, and definately not for my AskApache CrazyCache plugin, which I will be releasing last... So for all of you who've helped me out by sending me suggestions and notifying me of errors and sticking with it... Just wanted to say sorry about that, and thanks for all the great ideas.. Well, I've been sticking with it as well believe it our not. I manage to get free days once in a while, and then its time to jam.
Its really nice to be able to print out a webpage you are reading using your browsers built-in print feature. Using CSS you can easily transform your site into a print-friendly site.
Today I received an email from a visitor to my site requesting that I add a way to print site articles on AskApache
Ever wanted to execute commands on your server through php? Now you can. I'm calling this file (see below) shell.php and it allows you to run commands on your web server with the same permissions that your php executable has.
The goal is to add the HostGator server to be an exact mirror of the static.askapache.com domain, then to add that server as a 2nd A record to my DNS zone. That way half the visitors to the size will be taking up resources and bandwidth on the HostGator server instead of mine.
Round Robin A records in DNS are intended to evenly distribute queries between each host of the same name. Using some tricks straight out of a hackers toolbox we can verify if the distribution is taking place. (It is.)
The story behind this plugin is sorta wack, but in a good way :). While doing tons of security research on permissions, authorization, access, etc.. for the Password Protection plugin (still being worked on), I needed to have unheard of debugging capabilities while working on the plugin on the various websites, webhosts, and test servers that I use to test in different environments. So I hacked together a bunch of php code that helped me debug, actually I pretty much went overkill and tried to get as much debugging info as programmatically possible, and it ended up being so much code that I took it out of my Password Protection code and made it its own plugin.
3-Part article covering practical implementation of 3 advanced .htaccess features. Discover an easy way to boost your SEO the AskApache way (focus on visitors), a tip you might keep and use for life. Get some cool security tricks to use against spammers, crackers, and other nefarious sorts. Take your site's error handling to the next level, enhanced ErrorDocuments that go beyond 404's.
Enumerating Permissions can be Annoying
Don’t ask me how because I won’t tell you, but on one of the hosts I was testing on that did not allow direct access I was able to get the Apache server running as dhapache to erroneously write a file into my users blog directory. This is a big security no-no and I now have my .htaccess file written into the blog directory where it should go, but instead of my php script’s user having write access to the file so I can modify it, its owned by dhapache! Because the file is owned by dhapache I shouldn’t even be allowed to know it exists, but there it is. So the next step was to try and take ownership of the .htaccess file so that I could modify it. I tried and tried but was unsuccessful, I couldn’t modify it so that was another dead end. Actually it took me awhile to figure out how to remove the file from my directory. Being that it was owned by dhapache I couldn’t delete or modify it using my php process or even through ftp/ssh! Sysadmins regularly run find commands that search the servers for any files owned by dhapache that should not be there as this is a big red flag that someone has found a way to manipulate dhapache which could potentially lead to modifying dhapache-owned server config files, which sometimes is all it takes to hack your website and server.. Luckily I was able to delete it by basically running the hack again to overwrite the file.
Skip this - still under edit
I discovered these tips and tricks mostly while working as a network security penetration specialist hired to find security holes in web hosting environments. Shared hosting is the most common and cheapest form of web-hosting where multiple customers are placed on a single machine and "share" the resources (CPU/RAM/SPACE). The machines are configured to basically ONLY do HTTP and FTP. No shells or any interactive logins, no ssh, just FTP access. That is when I started examining htaccess files in great detail and learned about the incredible untapped power of htaccess. For 99% of the worlds best Apache admins, they don't use .htaccess much, if AT ALL. It's much easier, safer, and faster to configure Apache using the httpd.conf file instead. However, this file is almost never readable on shared-hosts, and I've never seen it writable. So the only avenue left for those on shared-hosting was and is the .htaccess file, and holy freaking fiber-optics.. it's almost as powerful as httpd.conf itself!
Most all .htaccess code works in the httpd.conf file, but not all httpd.conf code works in .htaccess files, around 50%. So all the best Apache admins and programmers never used .htaccess files. There was no incentive for those with access to httpd.conf to use htaccess, and the gap grew. It's common to see "computer gurus" on forums and mailing lists rail against all uses and users of .htaccess files, smugly announcing the well known problems with .htaccess files compared with httpd.conf - I wonder if these "gurus" know the history of the htaccess file, like it's use in the earliest versions of the HTTP Server- NCSA's HTTPd, which BTW, became known as Apache HTTP. So you could easily say that htaccess files predates Apache itself.
Once I discovered what .htaccess files could do towards helping me enumerate and exploit security vulnerabilities even on big shared-hosts I focused all my research into .htaccess files, meaning I was reading the venerable Apache HTTP Source code 24/7! I compiled every released version of the Apache Web Server, ever, even NCSA's, and focused on enumerating the most powerful htaccess directives. Good times! Because my focus was on protocol/file/network vulnerabilites instead of web dev I built up a nice toolbox of htaccess tricks to do unusual things. When I switched over to webdev in 2005 I started using htaccess for websites, not research. I documented most of my favorites and rewrote the htaccess guide for webdevelopers. After some great encouragement on various forums and nets I decided to start a blog to share my work with everyone, AskApache.com was registered, I published my guide, and it was quickly plagiarized and scraped all over the net. Information is freedom, and freedom is information, so this blog has the least restrictive copyright for you. Feel free to modify, copy, republish, sell, or use anything on this site ;)
This is all new, experimental, and very very cool. It literally uses .htaccess techniques to create several virtual "locked gates" that require a specific key to unlock, in a specific order that cannot be bypassed. It uses whitelisting .htaccess tricks to specify exactly what is allowed, instead of trying to specify everything that isn't allowed. Also, by setting specific cookies/tokens after successfully passing through a gate, we can then require the exact cookie/token from the previous gate, which stops an attacker from skipping or bypassing gates.
SetEnv, SetEnvIf, and SetEnvIfNoCase directives conditionally set environment variables accessible by scripts and apache based on HTTP Headers, Variables, and Request information.
A list of API Versions and the corresponding HTTPD Version, for use in determining the version of Apache currently running without having to rely on the often inaccurate SERVER_SOFTWARE Header.
Well what can I say, other than this is sooo DOPE! Here is a list of the modules this plugin (version 4.7 unreleased) will automatically detect. I compiled the list myself using every module included with any default Apache installation for ALL the versions listed below, 1.3 to 2.2+
Want to know something else I'm including in this plugin? For each and every module that is detected, this plugin can then detect ALL of the modules .htaccess Directives! For instance, RewriteRule, AccessFileName, AddHandler, etc.. are each a directive belonging to a module that is allowed to be used from within .htaccess files.
Talk about sick.. these tricks have the diamond disease!
This past week I updated my sites apache.css file for a site-redesign. I wanted to make changes to the .css file that only I could see, so that my regular traffic and site-visitors would still see the old version. Here's the elegant solution I came up with using .htaccess and mod_rewrite that works so well I'm sharing it with all you wonderful and incredible people reading my blog :)
This is part II of the Advanced SEO used on AskApache.com Series and describes how to control which urls are indexed by Search Engines and how to move them higher up in Search Results.
Top 3 ways to speed up websites that use Google Analytics. Host Script Locally, Fix Google-Analytics Cookie Domain, and Failsafe Loading for optimum tracking statistics.
The use of "hacker" to mean "security breaker" is a confusion on the part of the mass media. We hackers refuse to recognize that meaning, and continue using the word to mean someone who loves to program, someone who enjoys playful cleverness, or the combination of the two. See my article, On Hacking.
-- Richard M. Stallman
The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect. -Tim Berners-Lee
A strong free software movement focused on the principled issues of software freedom and a strong FSF in particular will determine what freedoms the next generation of computer users enjoy. At stake is no less than the next generation's autonomy. -Benjamin Mako Hill
It's very simple - you read the protocol and write the code. -Bill Joy
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