I have password protected a folder using .htpasswd and .htaccess that contains digital assets that I want to control the downloading of using php.
I was planning on offering a download link using the mechanism:
http://username:password#www.website.com/directory/
However, I don't want people to have access to the username and password. In other words I want to make a php gateway file with a different url that decides to offer the download or not, based on information available in the database.
This is a security thing, so I'm not confident of where to start with this. I'm sure I could hash together some code but I'm not confident about it. How can I do this securely? Any help greatly appreciated.
If you have the technical possibility I would suggest you even store the assets outside of the web accessible folders so you don't need to rely on htaccess for protection. That way your PHP gateway script is the only way to access those files.
I won't go into details about writing the script itself, there are multitudes of ways to do that and it very much depends on your requirements what is best, so more information would be needed to give some advice to that. If your assets are very big then streaming them through your script might not work due to memory/time limitations, in that case you could symlink them from the safe location to a public location with a randomly hashed path/filename for a limited time and give that link out.
Related
I'm trying to create a security mechanism that only allows my application to upload files to my FTP (username and password login is not enough). To achieve this I was thinking of creating a key that is built in to the app, and before any file can be uploaded to the FTP this key has to be read and verified. If it's correct, then the file can be uploaded.
Is this something that is possible to do, and would this approach be preferred? Does anyone have any pointers on how to do this?
(note: i'm not asking for any code, just some pointers on where to start, since my searches aren't getting my anywhere)
Thanks.
if you are worried about unsecured wi-fi, etc, you can either use SFTP or tunneling over SSH e.g. with connectbot
the use of public key crypto will will make sniffing harder.
if this is too much work for the intended userbase, you could generate one time passes (like google authenticator) and upload your file with a POST form or something.
if you are afraid of the key itself getting stolen (compromised device), there is little you can do..
There's no point in reproducing an answer from another question verbatim, so I'll just post this link to it.
I have a file setup.php.
This file has the mysql username and password. Is there any method to make it unreadable or encrypt it so that even the admin can not read it, or can read it but still not know the password?
The short answer is that for practical purposes you can make it harder for them to access it but not impossible.
If someone has full access to a server filesystem (eg, with root permissions) then they can read any data off that filesystem, so they can read the code and any data files that you place on there. As the application running on that host needs to be able to use the credentials there's no effective way to prevent someone with full access to that server from reading them.
You could obfuscate them, to make it a bit harder. if you encrypt the credentials in the setup.php file and then placed a decryption algorithm and key in another php file, it would stop someone just opening the file and getting the creds, but it they could always reverse engineer that solution if they're determined enough.
Additionally if they've got full control of the server it would be possible to use a packet sniffing tool to get the credentials as they're used (unless you're encrypting them with something like SSL).
Ultimately if someone is running an application and controls the server you have to place a level of trust in them.
As an aside there's a stackexchange site at security.stackexchange.com that's a good place for questions like this.
Create a new user in MySQL and give some basic permissions for that user. Then you will have two users, your admin account and the user account with limit privileges.
You also can deny view a folder where your setup.php is located doing the same trick, create other user in your OS to limit restrictions to that folder
I have been wondering how secure a codeigniter setup is. Because information like db passwords etc is stored in config files in the main application folder could this be retrievable by hackers? I know you can move the application folder to a location away from the web root but is it still safe if you don't?
Also, even if you did move it some place else, the path to that other place is hardcoded into the index.php file that remains in the web root. I'm sure there is a simple explanation as to why it is safe, but could someone explain it to me?
I suppose that it depends on the hacker and the type of hack they are employing. If you're asking if some Joe Schmoe can view the config file settings from the web, then the answer is no. See Can a Client View Server Side PHP Source Code for more details.
If you're concerned that a hacker will break into your server for that kind of information, then you might want to invest some time in extending or overriding the native Database library and add some encryption for the database information as you read it from the configuration file. Or if you want to go completely hidden on the configuration, you could spend some time extending the Config class.
On the surface, CodeIgniter is as secure as any other PHP framework from the file sense. Place appropriate .htaccess rules and the web side should be just fine. That just leaves proper security of your web server.
Try running Google Skipfish against your app. See if it can sniff any lapses in security. The more likely case is your app using $_GET and $_POST variables directly in views, rather than the framework exposing your app to some risks.
I have a website developed in PHP. There are 2 classes (in 2 seperate php files) that contain the siteadmin's gmail user id and password (in plain text) and database password (again in plain text). Though none of these classes are displayed on the browser ( like index.php). These files contain only php classes and no html code and the references to those plain text passwords is only through objects of those classes.
Off late, I have started to wonder if this is secure enough? I have tried my best (acting as a malicious person) to try and read the contents of the two said php files but was not able to do so. I am not very conversant with developing secure code, so not sure what should be my approach to make sure that these passwords never get exposed.
Could any one please suggest best practices to develop php code that can contain such sensitive information securely.
Put configurable items in a separate configuration file, above your public web directory
Make sure you have set correct file permissions to your files
Check your web application for local (and remote) file inclusion
Have your server up-to-date
Having your passwords at a safe spot is not the complete solution, you'll need to have your complete PHP application secure, and nobody unauthorized should be able to get root/administrator access to the server.
Firstly, I'd look at using OAuth for accessing GMail if at all possible - it means you don't have to store credentials at all, and provides some level of protection in case your server does get compromised.
I would also look at the answers to this question.
Finally, if your site is on the public internet, it's worth reading up on at least the basics of internet security, and especially securing web applications. There are all sorts of ways things can go wrong. I like the "hacking exposed" books.
Don't store passwords in files, because someone will eventually check that file into source control. Or someone will set a permission incorrectly.
Run the application with its own O/S user account
Put the passwords in an O/S environment variable for the application user (not a system environment variable)
I'm working on a project which involves an FTP server running ProFTPd and a PHP/MySQL backend that creates accounts for users.
Upon the creation of accounts, users are sent e-mails with their account details and instructions for downloading FileZilla or CyberDuck, depending on their OS, detected via user-agent string.
To make things easier for novices, I thought of having .lnk files generated for FileZilla with the account logins details as parameters, so they would just have to click on the .lnk files to open up the server. This is not a crucial feature but more of a technical challenge.
My questions are :
is this even feasible ?
are there any alternatives (eg. generating a .bat with a script pointing to the Filezilla executable ?)
are there any issues, perhaps with relative / absolute paths pointing to the executable ?
to go even further, what would be the simplest way of providing users with software with FTP access on a single account / single server (web interface is not an option).
It's very difficult to create .lnk files programmatically. See this answer.
In FileZilla, I think the best you can do reliably is to pass along a filezilla.xml file, and describe the steps necessary to import it after FileZilla has been installed.
I don't see any way that you can do this while making it easier for novice users. If you create a shortcut file, you'd have to know the path of the install. Good luck getting that from a user who you assume would have a hard time using a username/password in an FTP program. Even if you got that, you'd be generating the shortcut file after you receive input from the user, then you'd have to email the file to the user or have them download it -> delay.
I would advise against this. Having worked with clueless users before, any attempt to make things "easier" for them but requiring them to do something else usually backfires immensely. Save yourself the headache, and provide a very well-written how-to instead.