Disabling access to specific directories and their contents

Question

I have a Web site that contains several Web applications. Each Web application corresponds to a subdirectory of the document root whose name starts with "Web". (For example, /WebLulzGenerator and /WebInternetHateMachine are Web applications but /MoarHelperz is not.)

I want that those Web applications be available only via HTTPS, so I did the following in my httpd.conf file:

<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

<DirectoryMatch "^/Web[A-Za-z0-9]+">
    Order allow,deny
    Deny from all
</DirectoryMatch>

# In extra/httpd-ssl.conf, access to "^/Web[A-Za-z0-9]+"
# is reenabled, but only through HTTPS.

However, when I tested my configuration "http://myip/WebTest" opened correctly. What am I doing wrong?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 23 '11 at 15:25

<Directory> maps to physical locations of resources. You should use <Location> or <LocationMatch>for locations.

<LocationMatch /Web.*>
   Order Allow,deny
   Deny from All
</Location>

Beware of the following warning from the documentation:

<Location> sections operate completely outside the filesystem. This has several consequences. Most importantly, <Location> directives should not be used to control access to filesystem locations. Since several different URLs may map to the same filesystem location, such access controls may by circumvented.

Disabling access to specific directories and their contents

1 Answers1