I'm making a members area for my site and I have it already running. I authenticate members using mysql and php and this works really well.
But now problems occurs, I would like to offer members a possibility to upload files to the systems, and those files should be available ONLY to logged in members.
I know I could store those files to a database or even in a filesystem and serve them throught php, BUT this will get very heavy for the server when members upload bigger files. Those files might be even 20MB or even bigger.
I would like to let apache serve the files, but just need to find a way to automatically do the http authentication, so users wouldn't need to log in twice. I suppose it is ok to make this http authentication behind one username and password, something like when a user logs in to the php and mysql authentication, transparently at the same time javascript etc. would do that http authentication also, every member would do the http authentication with the same credentials. Of course I wouldn't want to store those http auth credentials in a javascript file, but something ajax like solution maybe would do the trick. I'm just not sure how to do this.
It seems like you are confusing authentication (where you provide some way to login) with HTTP authentication (where you specifically use the HTTP protocol to authenticate, and the browser shows a popup to the user).
You probably want the former so you can style the login page. In that case you'll have to use PHP or some scripting langauge to check that the user is logged in. fpassthru or readfile can be good solutions for some web sites; they're fast and optimised for this type of work.
If you really want to do the file handling work in the web browser and not in PHP, one solution can be to create unique, short-lived filenames. You can for example create hard links to the file in PHP using link and then redirect the user to the temporary filename. Store the hard links in a database and remove them after a short while.
Check out Using PHP/Apache to restrict access to static files (html, css, img, etc). I think the approach taken there is pretty similar to your problem.
Related
There are different user for my website, and for each user there are separate PDF files, I want to give users privilege to download their files(but should not see the files of others users). Now I have created a login and I have the user-id in SESSION (I am using PHP for backend). So what is the secure way of accomplishing this task? Also how should I manage many of these PDFs on my server? (currently I have kept all the PDFs in one folder, but this seems insecure and I think these can easily be extracted by the un-authenticated user)
At a high level:
Store your PDFs outside of your webserver document root. Make them completely inaccessible to direct browser access.
Write a PHP script to handle download requests. This PHP page can check the session user ID to ensure the user is requesting a file that they are allowed to access.
Use header() calls and readfile() to then send the appropriate PDF file to the user.
Feel free to come back and post a question when you've researched and worked on this, and have a specific question with code.
I'd like to have logged in users access to certain directories only. For example, have the following directory structure:
/stuff/user-a/pic.jpg
/stuff/user-b/file.doc
I'd like Apache to only give user-a access to /stuff/user-a and give a 403 if he tries to reach /stuff/user-b
Now, I've been reading and it seems to be possible to do this with REMOTE_USER and mod_rewrite. Which will make it even better, as i could rewrite it as /stuff -> /stuff/$REMOTE_USER
The problem is, I don't want the ugly browser popup. My PHP application already has a login form and a session. From what I've been reading, it is possible to use basic HTTP authentication as an auth method for PHP (to login as http://user:pass#stackoverflow.com). But the opposite (passing a web form to the HTTP authentication) doesn't seem to be possible.
I would also like to avoid using something as mod_xsendfile, as I'd rather not use any "proxy" scripts to handle this, and let Apache take care of access.
I'm making a social network which is located at http://studnet.x10.bz. To make a long essay short, I have a users folder located in public html which contains users, their pictures, and pretty much all the data on their accounts. For undisclosed reasons, I cannot move the folder out of public html. If it would help, I am using x10hosting.
Now, I have an img tag which reads the picture from the folder. When it attempts to load, it needs auth verification. Obviously I can't give it to anyone. (What's the point there?) Does anyone know how I can access it without triggering an auth request?
One approach would be to create a PHP wrapper script in a non-protected area. This would then either make a CURL request specifying authentication options, or directly access the filesystem, and serve up the data.
This assumes you either have local filesystem permissions to read the image, or authentication tokens you can use for curl access.
There is this PHP script on my website which I don't want people to be able to run by just typing its name in the browser.
Ideally I would like this script to be run only by registered users and only from within a Windows app (which I will have to provide). Can this be done ?
Alternatively, how can I protect this script so that it can only be called from a specific page or script?
Also how can I hide the exact URI from appearing on the address bar?
Thanks !
If you are running Apache for your webserver, you can protect it with a username/password combo using .htaccess. It takes a little configuration if your server is not already configured to allow .htaccess. Here are the Apache docs.
If you need authentication based on application-specific factors, you can put something at the top of your script like
<?php
if(!$user->isLoggedIn()) {
// do 404
header('HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found');
}
Do you have a question about how you would implement isLoggedIn?
You can also use mod_rewrite to rewrite URIs, and those directives can go inside your .htaccess as well. mod_rewrite can rewrite incoming requests transparently (from the browser's perspective) so a request for /foo/bar can be translated into secret_script.php/foo/bar. Docs for mod_rewrite.
However you decide to implement this, I would urge you to not rely solely on the fact that your script's name is obscure as a means to secure your application. At the very least, use .htaccess with some per-user authentication, and consider having your application authenticate users as well.
As Jesse says, it's possible to restrict your script to logged in users. There are a large number of questions on this already. Search for PHP authentication.
However, it is not possible to restrict it to a single application. It is fairly simple to use a program like Wireshark to see exactly how the program logs in and makes request. At that point, they can reproduce its behavior manually or in their own application.
There are a variety of different ways that you could go about securing a script. All have pluses and minuses, and its likely that the correct answer for your situation will be a combination of several.
Like mentioned, you could lock down the account with Apache...it's a good start. Similarly, you could build a powerful 'salt-ed' security system such as this: http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/JavaScript/Building-a-CHAP-Login-System-An-ObjectOriented-Approach/ If you use SSL as well, you're essentially getting yourself security like banks use on their websites--not perfect, but certainly not easy to break into.
But there are other ideas to consider too. Park your script in a class file that sits inaccessible via direct URI, then do calls to the various functions from an intermediary view script. Not perfect, but it does limit the ways that someone could directly access the file. Consider adding a "qualifier" to the URL via a simple get--have the script check for the qualifier or fail....again, not a great solution on its own, but one additional layer to dissuade the bad guys. If you have control of who's getting access (know exactly which networks) you could even go so far as to limit the IP's or the http referers that are allowed to access the file. Consider setting and checking cookies, with a clear expiration. Don't forget to set your robots file so the browsers don't stumble upon the script your trying to protect.
A while back my company did a membership app using Delphi on the front end, talking to php and MySql on the backend....it was a bit clunky given that we were all web application developers. If you're so inclined, perhaps Adobe Flex might be an option. But ultimately, you'll have to open a door that the application could talk to, and if someone was determined, theoretically they could dig through your app to find the credentials and use them to gain instant access to the site. If you're going the desktop app route, perhaps its time to consider having the app avoid talking to an intermediary script and do its work on the local machine, communicating the db that sits remote.
you can use deny access on .htaccess on a folder with a php authentification that will redirect to those php file
Using php I authenticate a user, then behind the scenes,they are then again authenticated a second time with a single .htaccess username & password. This would be the same for all users, but I would not want them to have to enter a username and password again and they would now be allowed to enter the password protected directory. I prefer not to use http://username#password:somedomain.com.
Any thoughts?
You should not do this.
Either:
Add code to your .htaccess protected directory to use your PHP authentication scheme and remove the .htaccess authentication.
Write a new PHP page/script through which your authenticated users will access all of the protected content. Move the protected content out of the web root, or use your .htaccess file to deny all access. Your script will be able to access the files, but users will have to go through the script to access them.
If you want to avoid multiple logins but need HTTP authentication, you can use only HTTP authentication for the actual login. This is because PHP can issue and respond to such headers.
http://php.net/manual/en/features.http-auth.php
This way the user receives a pop up, PHP can read it and respond accordingly and the browser will pass it with subsequent requests eliminating further prompts.
Note: This solution is not available to CGI versions of PHP.
Sorry, I do not believe this is possible (unless you want to use the username:pass#url scheme). You could write some ajax to do it behind the scenes, which would mean that the browser will remember the auth for that area (maybe, I have never actually tried it). But you would still need the username/pass regardless.
For the security of not transmitting the password in clear text on the browser (I assume you are using https to transmit the password over the network, or if your not you should!) I think it will be a little annoying for the user, but not a huge amount of hassle in my opinion.
Of course you could do the authenticating on that other folder in PHP, which would solve the issue, or put all your protected code in the one place with the one HTTP auth, but I assume you dont want (or cant) do this.