Articles tagged as “htaccess” [ page 2 ]

IE6 Support Spectrum

I know, I know, not another post about IE6! I actually typed this up a couple of weeks ago while immersed in my site redesign project. I had recently decided that I would no longer support that terrible browser, and this tangential post just kind of “fell out.” I wasn’t sure whether or not to post it, but I recently decided to purge my draft stash by posting everything for your reading pleasure. Thus, you may see a few turds in the next few weeks, but hopefully this ...

Blacklist Candidate Series Summary

Presenting the Perishable Press Blacklist Candidate Series! An ongoing series of articles on the fine art of malicious exploit detection and prevention. Learn about preventing the sneaky mischievous and deceptive practices of some of the worst spammers, scrapers, crackers, and other scumbags on the Internet. Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-10-19 Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-05-31 Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-04-27 Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-03-09 Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-02-10 Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-01-02 Stay tuned for more exciting adventures in the Blacklist ...

Evil Incarnate, but Easily Blocked

As my readers know, I spend a lot of time digging through error logs, preventing attacks, and reporting results. Occasionally, some moron will pull a stunt that deserves exposure, public humiliation, and banishment. There is certainly no lack of ...

Redirect All Requests for a Nonexistent File to the Actual File

In my previous article on redirecting 404 requests for favicon files, I presented an HTAccess technique for redirecting all requests for nonexistent favicon.ico files to the actual file located in the site’s web-accessible root directory: # REDIRECT FAVICONZ RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} favicon.ico [NC] RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.tld/favicon.ico [R=301,L] As discussed in the article, this code is already in effect here at Perishable Press, as may be seen by clicking on any of the following links: http://perishablepress.com/press/favicon.ico http://perishablepress.com/press/2007/06/12/favicon.ico...

Stop the Madness: Redirect those Ridiculous Favicon 404 Requests

For the last several months, I have been seeing an increasing number of 404 errors requesting “favicon.ico” appended onto various URLs: http://perishablepress.com/press/favicon.ico http://perishablepress.com/press/2007/06/12/favicon.ico http://perishablepress.com/press/2007/09/25/absolute-horizontal-and-vertical-centering-via-css/favicon.ico http://perishablepress.com/press/2007/08/01/temporary-site-redirect-for-visitors-during-site-updates/favicon.ico http://perishablepress.com/press/2007/01/16/maximum-and-minimum-height-and-width-in-internet-explorer/favicon.ico When these errors first began appearing in the logs several months ago, I didn’t think too much of it — “just another idiot who can’t find my site’s favicon..” As time went on, however, the frequency and variety of these misdirected requests continued to increase. A bit frustrating perhaps, but not serious enough to justify immediate action. After all, what’s the worst that can happen? The idiot might actually find the blasted thing? Wouldn’t that be nice.. But no, the 404 favicon errors just won’t go away. Last week, ...

Perishable Press HTAccess Spring Cleaning, Part 2

Before Summer arrives, I need to post the conclusion to my seasonal article, Perishable Press HTAccess Spring Cleaning, Part 1. As explained in the first post, I recently spent some time to consolidate and optimize the Perishable Press site-root and blog-root HTAccess files. Since the makeover, I have enjoyed better performance, fewer errors, and cleaner code. In this article, I share some of the changes made to the blog-root HTAccess file and provide a brief explanation as to their intended purpose. Granted, most of ...

Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-05-31

Welcome to the Perishable Press “Blacklist Candidate” series. In this post, we continue our new tradition of exposing, humiliating and banishing spammers, crackers and other worthless scumbags.. Just under the wire! Even so, this month’s official Blacklist-Candidate article may be the last monthly installment of the series. Although additional BC articles may appear in the future, it is unlikely that they will continue as a regular monthly feature. Oh sure, I see the tears streaming down your face, but think about it: this is actually good ...

Series Summary: Building the 3G Blacklist

In the now-complete series, Building the 3G Blacklist, I share insights and discoveries concerning website security and protection against malicious attacks. Each article in the series focuses on unique blacklist strategies designed to protect sites transparently, effectively, and efficiently. The five articles culminate in the release of the next generation 3G Blacklist. For the record, here is a quick summary of the entire Building the 3G Blacklist series: Building the 3G Blacklist, Part 1 Improving Site Security by Recognizing and Exploiting Server Attack Patterns: In this first article of the series, I examine the ...

Perishable Press HTAccess Spring Cleaning, Part 1

While developing the 3G Blacklist, I completely renovated the Perishable Press site-root and blog-root HTAccess files. Since the makeover, I have enjoyed better performance, fewer errors, and cleaner code. In this article, I share some of the changes made to the root HTAccess file and provide a brief explanation as to their intended purpose and potential benefit. In sharing this information, I hope to inspire others to improve their own HTAccess and/or configuration files. In the next article, I will cover some of the ...

Improve Site Security by Protecting HTAccess Files

As you know, HTAccess files are powerful tools for manipulating site performance and functionality. Protecting your site’s HTAccess files is critical to maintaining a secure environment. Fortunately, preventing access to your HTAccess files is very easy. Let’s have a look.. Different Methods If you search around the Web, you will probably find several different methods of protecting your HTAccess files. Here are a few examples, along with a bit of analysis: Case-sensitive protection — As far as I know, this is the most widespread method of protecting HTAccess files. Very straightforward, this code will prevent anyone from accessing any file ...

Perishable Press 3G Blacklist

After much research and discussion, I have developed a concise, lightweight security strategy for Apache-powered websites. Prior to the development of this strategy, I relied on several extensive blacklists to protect my sites against malicious user agents and IP addresses. Over time, these mega-lists became unmanageable and ineffective. As increasing numbers of attacks hit my server, I began developing new techniques for defending against external threats. This work soon culminated in the release of a ...

Building the 3G Blacklist, Part 5: Improving Site Security by Selectively Blocking Individual IPs

In this continuing five-article series, I share insights and discoveries concerning website security and protecting against malicious attacks. Wrapping up the series with this article, I provide the final key to our comprehensive blacklist strategy: selectively blocking individual IPs. Previous articles also focus on key blacklist strategies designed ...

Building the 3G Blacklist, Part 4: Improving the RedirectMatch Directives of the Original 2G Blacklist

In this continuing five-article series, I share insights and discoveries concerning website security and protecting against malicious attacks. In this fourth article, I build upon previous ideas and techniques by improving the directives contained in the original, 2G Blacklist. Subsequent articles will focus on key blacklist strategies designed to protect your site transparently, effectively, and efficiently. At the conclusion of the series, the five articles will culminate in the release of the next generation 3G Blacklist. Improving the RedirectMatch Directives of the Original ...

Building the 3G Blacklist, Part 3: Improving Site Security by Selectively Blocking Rogue User Agents

In this continuing five-article series, I share insights and discoveries concerning website security and protecting against malicious attacks. In this third article, I discuss targeted, user-agent blacklisting and present an alternate approach to preventing site access for the most prevalent and malicious user agents. Subsequent articles will focus on key blacklist strategies designed to protect your site transparently, effectively, and efficiently. At the conclusion of the series, the five articles will culminate in the release of the next generation 3G Blacklist. Improving Site Security ...

Building the 3G Blacklist, Part 2: Improving Site Security by Preventing Malicious Query-String Exploits

In this continuing five-article series, I share insights and discoveries concerning website security and protecting against malicious attacks. In this second article, I present an incredibly powerful method for eliminating malicious query string exploits. Subsequent articles will focus on key blacklist strategies designed to protect your site transparently, effectively, and efficiently. At the conclusion of the series, the five articles will culminate in the release of the next generation 3G Blacklist. Improving Site Security by Preventing Malicious Query String Exploits A ...

Building the 3G Blacklist, Part 1: Improving Site Security by Recognizing and Exploiting Server Attack Patterns

In this series of five articles, I share insights and discoveries concerning website security and protecting against malicious attacks. In this first article of the series, I examine the process of identifying attack trends and using them to immunize against future attacks. Subsequent articles will focus on key blacklist strategies designed to protect your site transparently, effectively, and efficiently. At the conclusion of the series, the five articles will culminate in the release of the next generation 3G Blacklist. Improving Site Security by Recognizing and Exploiting Server Attack Patterns Crackers, spammers, scrapers, and other attackers are getting smarter ...

Universal www-Canonicalization via htaccess

During my previous rendezvous involving comprehensive canonicalization for WordPress, I offer my personally customized technique for ensuring consistently precise and accurate URL delivery. That particular method targets WordPress exclusively (although the logic could be manipulated for general use), and requires a bit of editing to adapt the code to each particular configuration. In this follow-up tutorial, I present a basic www-canonicalization technique that accomplishes the following: requires or removes the www prefix for all URLs absolutely no editing when requiring the www prefix minimal amount of editing when removing the www prefix minimal ...

Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-04-27

Welcome to the Perishable Press “Blacklist Candidate” series. In this post, we continue our new tradition of exposing, humiliating and banishing spammers, crackers and other worthless scumbags.. Since the implementation of my 2G Blacklist, I have enjoyed a significant decrease in the overall number and variety of site attacks. In fact, I had to time-travel back to March 1st just to find a candidate worthy of this month’s blacklist spotlight. I ...

How to Block Proxy Servers via htaccess

Not too long ago, a reader going by the name of bjarbj78 asked about how to block proxy servers from accessing her website. Apparently, bjarbj78 had taken the time to compile a proxy blacklist of over 9,000 domains, only to discover afterwards that the formulated htaccess blacklisting strategy didn’t work as expected: deny from proxydomain.com proxydomain2.com Blacklisting proxy servers by blocking individual domains seems like a futile exercise. Although there are a good number of reliable, consistent proxy domains that could be blocked directly, the vast majority of such sites are constantly changing. It would take a team of professionals working around the clock just ...

Three Unsolved WordPress Mysteries

After several years of using WordPress, I have at least three unanswered questions: What’s up with the WordPress PHP Memory Error? Why do certain phrases trigger “Forbidden” errors when saving or publishing posts? What happened to the Plugin Pages in the WordPress Codex? Let’s have a look at each one of these baffling mysteries.. Unsolved Mystery #1: What’s up with the WordPress PHP Memory Error? Every single day, WordPress generates hundreds of these errors: [20-Feb-2008 19:49:42] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 6316713 bytes) in /home/.../press/wp-includes/cache.php on line 330 [20-Feb-2008 19:50:51] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to ...

Content Negotiation for XHTML Documents via PHP and htaccess

In this article, I discuss the different MIME types available for XHTML and explain a method for serving your documents with the optimal MIME type, depending on the capacity of the user agent. Using either htaccess or PHP for content negotiation, we can serve complete, standards-compliant markup for our document’s header information. This is especially helpful when dealing with Internet Explorer while serving a DOCTYPE of XHTML 1.1 along with the recommended XML declaration. According to the ...

Redirect WordPress Feeds to Feedburner via htaccess (Redux)

In a previous article, I explain how to redirect your WordPress feeds to Feedburner. Redirecting your WordPress feeds to Feedburner enables you to take advantage of their many freely provided, highly useful tracking and statistical services. Although there are a few important things to consider before optimizing your feeds and switching to Feedburner, many WordPress users redirect their blog’s two main feeds — “main content” and “all comments” — using either ...

Custom HTTP Errors via htaccess

We all know how important it is to deliver sensible, helpful 404 error pages to our visitors. There are many ways of achieving this functionality, including the well-known htaccess trick used to locally redirect users to custom error pages: # htaccess custom error pages ErrorDocument 400 /errors/400.html ErrorDocument 401 /errors/401.html ErrorDocument 403 /errors/403.html ErrorDocument 404 /errors/404.html ErrorDocument 500 /errors/500.html ..and so on. These directives basically tell Apache to deliver the designated documents for their associated error types. Many webmasters and developers employ this trick to ensure that visitors receive customized error pages that are generally more user-friendly or design-specific than the rather unfriendly Apache defaults. Serving custom error pages is ...

Blacklist Candidate Number 2008-03-09

Welcome to the Perishable Press “Blacklist Candidate” series. In this post, we continue our new tradition of exposing, humiliating and banishing spammers, crackers and other worthless scumbags.. Imagine, if you will, an overly caffeinated Bob Barker, hunched over his favorite laptop, feverishly scanning his server access files. Like some underpaid factory worker pruning defective bobble heads from a Taiwanese assembly line, Bob rapidly identifies and isolates suspicious log entries with laser focus. Upon further investigation, affirmed spammers, scrapers and crackers are swiftly blacklisted from ...

2G Blacklist: Closing the Door on Malicious Attacks

Since posting the Ultimate htaccess Blacklist and then the Ultimate htaccess Blacklist 2, I find myself dealing with a new breed of malicious attacks. It is no longer useful to simply block nefarious user agents because they are frequently faked. Likewise, blocking individual IP addresses is generally a waste of time because the attacks are coming from a decentralized network of zombie machines. Watching my error and access logs very closely, I have ...