[Zope] Security problem in How-To: Caching with mod_proxy

Ragnar Beer rbeer@uni-goettingen.de
Tue, 22 May 2001 17:51:32 +0200


Howdy!

In the how-to I wrote about caching with mod_proxy 
(http://www.zope.org/Members/rbeer/caching) there is a security 
problem insofar that if you setup your server just like that it will 
be a public proxy that people can use to cover their traces when 
accessing other websites. To disable this behavior you could e.g. add 
a LocationMatch directive to your httpd.conf that denies every 
request that doesn't start with a slash.

<LocationMatch "^[^/]">
Deny from all
</LocationMatch>

To try out the problem and see the effect of the fix configure your 
browser to use www.mysite.org port 80 as a proxy (assuming the name 
of your site is www.mysite.org). Then try to access a page from your 
browser and look at your access_log.

Thanks to Ivo van der Wijk for pointing out the problem!

Cheers,

Ragnar

P.S.: I'll be in Switzerland for a couple of days and probably won't 
have internet access till monday. So if anybody replies and waits for 
my answer: please be patient ;)