Only allow access to files in directory from the website they are a part of

user_1170039 0
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I know there are a lot of similar questions out there, and I've trawled them all, but I can't seem to get any of the solutions to work.

I have a folder on the root of my website containing uploaded files that can be viewed and downloaded from the site when a user is logged in. They are here: https://example.com/uploads (for example). I need the site to continue to be able to access them to display them (some are images) and provide links for download (pdfs etc) so the user can download them, but I want to avoid anyone who get's hold of the url of a particular file being able to download them directly, like this: https://example.com/uploads/2020/02/myfile.pdf. OR these urls getting into search engines (or if they do, the server prevents them from being accessed directly.

I've tried adding an .htaccess file in the uploads directory with the following content:

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1

And I've tried

Order Allow,Deny
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1

...as I read that might allow HTTPS calls from the site itself as well as local urls.

But it forbids the site and a direct url request, which is no good.

Is there a way to do this?

server .htaccess apache
1 Answers

The user interface that provides the ‘official’ access to the files has user authentication, yes, but the files still exist in a directory than won’t stop anyone getting to them if they know the url.

You need to protect the files using the same authentication system that you are using to protect access to the user interface. The only way you could protect these resources by IP address (the client IP address) - as you are currently attempting in .htaccess - is if the client's IP is fixed and known in advance (but if this was the case then you wouldn't need another form of authentication to begin with).

So, this will primarily be an exercise in whatever scripting language/CMS is being used to authenticate the "user interface".

What you can use .htaccess for is to rewrite requests for these files to your server-side script that handles the authentication and then serves the file to the client once authenticated.

For example:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule ^uploads/. /serve-protected-file.php [L]

Any request for /uploads/<something> (eg. /uploads/2020/02/myfile.pdf), that maps to a valid file is routed to your script: /serve-protected-file.php.

/serve-protected-file.php would then need to do something like the following:

// 1. Parse the file being requested from REQUEST_URI

// 2. Is the requested file "protected"?
//    (Serving both protected and public files from the same directory?)

// 3. If not protected then serve/stream the resource to the client. END

// 4. If protected then authenticate the user...

// 5. If user authenticated then serve/stream the resource to the client. END

// 6. Resource is protected and user not authenticated...
//    Serve a 403 Forbidden. END

(Ideally, the location of these "protected" resources would be entirely outside of the document root - so they are "private" by default - and the URL the user uses to access these resources is entirely virtual - then you probably wouldn't need any additional coding in .htaccess and everything would be implemented by your front-controller - but that all depends on how your site is implemented and the way in which URLs are routed.)

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