How to prevent a file from direct URL Access

Question

I m using Apache and I have a sample web folder on my Local Host  like            http   localhost test      Files in the test folder           index html        sample jpg         htaccess       Sample source of index html    lt html gt     lt body gt       lt img src  sample jpg    gt     lt  body gt   lt  html gt    When I run the website at http   localhost test   it will simply show the image  sample jpg  on the page     Problem    I want to prevent the image showing as http   localhost test sample jpg directly in the url bar    Note  I found that the solutions below work when tested on every browser except Firefox

User · Answer

Based on your comments looks like this is what you need:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?localhost/ [NC] 
RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ - [F,NC]

I have tested it on my localhost and it seems to be working fine.

User · Answer

First of all  find where the main apache   s config file httpd conf is located  If you use Debian  it should be here   etc apache httpd conf  Using some file editor like Vim or Nano open this file and find the line that looks as follows   Options Includes Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews   then remove word Indexes and save the file  The line should look like this one   Options Includes FollowSymLinks MultiViews   After it is done  restart apache  e g   etc init d apache restart in Debian   That   s it

User · Answer

rosipov s rule works great   I use it on live sites to display a blank or special message    in place of a direct access attempt to files I d rather to protect a bit from direct view  I think it s more fun than a 403 Forbidden   So taking rosipov s rule to redirect any direct request to  gif jpg js txt  files to  messageforcurious     RewriteEngine on  RewriteCond   HTTP REFERER    http    www    domain  ltd  NC   RewriteCond   HTTP REFERER    http    www    domain  ltd     NC   RewriteRule    gif jpg js txt    messageforcurious  L    I see it as a polite way to disallow direct acces to  say  a CMS sensible files like xml  javascript    with security in mind  To all these bots scrawling the web nowadays  I wonder what their algo will make from my  messageforcurious

User · Answer

When I used it on my Webserver  can I only rename local host  like this   RewriteEngine on  RewriteCond   HTTP REFERER    http    www    mydomain com  NC   RewriteCond   HTTP REFERER    http    www    mydomain com     NC   RewriteRule    gif jpg   -  F

User · Answer

RewriteEngine on RewriteCond   HTTP REFERER    http    www    localhost     NC   RewriteCond   REQUEST URI    http    www    localhost        gif jpg png jpeg mp4    NC   RewriteRule   -  F

User · Answer

For me this was the only thing that worked and it worked great  RewriteCond   HTTP HOST     HTTP REFERER            https     1   RewriteRule   gif jpg jpeg png tif pdf wav wmv wma avi mov mp4 m4v mp3 zip    -  F  found it at  https   simplefilelist com how-can-i-prevent-direct-url-access-to-my-files-from-outside-my-website

User · Answer

Try the following   RewriteEngine on  RewriteCond   HTTP REFERER    http    www    localhost  NC   RewriteCond   HTTP REFERER    http    www    localhost     NC   RewriteRule    gif jpg   -  F    Returns 403  if you access images directly  but allows them to be displayed on site   Note  It is possible that when you open some page with image and then copy that image s path into the address bar you can see that image  it is only because of the browser s cache  in fact that image has not been loaded from the server  from Davo  full comment below

[regex] How to prevent a file from direct URL Access?

Examples related to regex

Examples related to apache

Examples related to .htaccess

Examples related to mod-rewrite

Examples related to hotlinking