The Apache HTTP Server is one of the most stable and secure services that ships
with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. There are an overwhelming number of options and techniques
available to secure the Apache HTTP Server — too numerous to delve into
deeply here.
It is important when configuring the Apache HTTP Server to read the documentation
available for the application. This includes the chapter titled
Apache HTTP Server in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Reference Guide,
the chapter titled Apache HTTP Server Configuration in the
Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Administration Guide, and the Stronghold manuals, available
at https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/stronghold/.
Below is a list of configuration options administrators should be
careful using.
This directive is enabled by default, be sure to use caution when creating
symbolic links to the document root of the Web server. For instance,
it is a bad idea to provide a symbolic link to /.
This directive is enabled by default, but may not be desirable. To
prevent visitors from browsing files on the server, remove this
directive.
The UserDir directive is disabled by
default because it can confirm the presence of a user account on the
system. To enable user directory browsing on the server,
use the following directives:
UserDir enabled
UserDir disabled root |
These directives activate user directory browsing for all user
directories other than /root/. To add
users to the list of disabled accounts, add a space delimited list of
users on the UserDir disabled line.
By default, the server-side includes module cannot execute
commands. It is ill advised to change this setting unless absolutely
necessary, as it could potentially enable an attacker to execute
commands on the system.
Be certain to only assign write permissions to the root user for any
directory containing scripts or CGIs. This can be accomplished by
typing the following commands:
chown root <directory_name>
chmod 755 <directory_name> |
Also, always verify that any scripts running on the system work as
intended before putting them into production.
