Can Public view my .staccess?

New Member Joined: Jan 29, 2006 Posts: 3

Hi,
I`m running Sentinal 2.5.02 on phpnuke 7.8.
My question is why sentinal asks to CHMOD as 666?
By doing so, it allows the public to view & write on my .*taccess files.

Code:

http://www.domainame.com/.staccess





shows CGIAuth IDs with encrypted passwords.

Do I supposed to change the chmoded permissions?
What affect would it make on my site?

Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 10:07 pm

Have you made the edits to the .htaccess of your site that Sentinel had said to do?
.htaccess should be stoping that from working at all.

registered · Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 11:22 pm

On certain setups, the Apache user is not run on the same group or user as the FTP user. So it may need public writable permissions for Sentinel to change the file.

Note: this does not mean that everyone world-wide can access and change your file. It just means other users on your webhost could possibly change them.

Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 3:02 am

darklord wrote:

Have you made the edits to the .htaccess of your site that Sentinel had said to do?
.htaccess should be stoping that from working at all.

Yes, I have edited it as sentinal asked, and CGI Authorizationn works fine as expected. But whenever a hacker tried to access .staccess, he may easily collect my IDs & encrypted passwords. (Even if passwords are encrypted, why do we let him to view so). As you said .htaccess stops viewing it self, but not on .stacess.

PS: Reacently hacking attacks to the site has been increased. So I have to take all possible steps to avoid them.

If I chmod .staccess to 600 & .htaccess to 644, would it make any affects on site?

registered · Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 8:34 am

raviwikey, you have misunderstood. The lines in .htaccess that the NukeSentinel instructions have you add are denying access to .staccess from the web server point of view.

If you are like most, your .staccess file changes very rarely. So, setting it like you are suggesting is fine. Just remember that you have done this come time when you wish to regenerate it because you have added a new admin or a password has changed. Wink

Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 6:27 pm

Thanks for the good advice. I checked chmoding in that way & up to now it works fine.
Due to 600, now it stops from server level. And I understand that, I have return back to the previous status to make changes.

Thanks a lot

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 7:39 am