Mastering Website Security: How to Deny Directory Listing with .htaccess

In the current digital environment, website security is critical. Every online institution, from small personal blogs to large e-commerce companies, is vulnerable to cyber assaults. Directory listing is one frequently disregarded vulnerability that allows attackers access private information. However, you may strengthen your website’s security and protect your data using the appropriate tools and methods.

Website Security Directory Listing Vulnerability

A web server that is set up to show directories’ contents in the absence of an index file (like index.html) is said to be performing directory listing. If someone visits the URL, they may accidentally discover private files, directories, and configuration data. This vulnerability can be used by hackers to learn more about the architecture of your website and possibly even carry out targeted attacks.

If you make a new directory on your website, and do not want put an “index.html” file into it, you may be surprised to find that your visitors can get a directory listing of all the files in that folder.

Example:

I have a directory “/public_html/ABCD/“

And too many sub directories into it, like
“/public_html/ABCD/Test1/“
“/public_html/ABCD/Test1/Test/“
“/public_html/ABCD/Test2/“

You can see everything in that directory simply by typing “http://www.example.com/Directory_name/“

Introducing .htaccess for Enhanced website Security

This article show you how you can improve website security and configure your web server so that it does not show a directory listing by default. Using .htaccess we can improve the page loading speed and we can caching the data.

Using .htaccess to implement directory listing avoidance is simple. To add the following directive, just create or edit the.htaccess file in your website’s root directory:

Add the following line to your .htaccess file

Options -Indexes

If you want to enable it,

Options +Indexes

If we want that some particular extension will not show than.

IndexIgnore *.zip *.css *.json *.pdf

If we want to index our files and showing it with some information than use

IndexOptions -FancyIndexing

You may strengthen the security posture of your website and prevent unwanted access to critical data by learning how to use.htaccess to restrict directory listing. In the often shifting world of the internet, be cautious, be secure, and never stop learning to stay one step ahead of possible threats.