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[Bug 1626315] [NEW] Wishlist: Apache-compatible 404 error response page

 

Public bug reported:

Due to receiving a few security reports about it, we've recently re-
styled the 404 response pages for most of the Mahara project sites. The
reports we received pointed out that the default Apache 404 response
page prints the url-decoded (but still html-escaped) query portion of
the URL on the page. This could result in attackers printing arbitrary
text onto the page, with spaces and such, which conceivably could be
part of a phishing attack.

To keep thing simple, we replaced it with a static empty page that
doesn't include any details about the requested query. However, ideally
we'd want to print out a page more like Google's 404 page:

1. Styled in the site's theme
2. Contains the requested URL, but in a way that clearly sets it apart (i.e., url-encoded so that spaces are transformed into %20, and possibly truncated if it's quite long.)
3. Maybe translated as well.

We could achieve this by shipping a PHP script with Mahara, which a
Mahara site admin could then configure their Apache server to use for
its 404 error document, via this directive:

ErrorDocument 404 /errors/404.php

We might also provide a "sample.htaccess" file, sitting at the top level
of the project (outside the htdocs directory) to show people how to set
this up. (We used to include a .htaccess file in Mahara's htdocs by
default, but this could cause crashes if people were using different
servers or different versions of Apache).

** Affects: mahara
     Importance: Wishlist
         Status: Confirmed

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1626315

Title:
  Wishlist: Apache-compatible 404 error response page

Status in Mahara:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Due to receiving a few security reports about it, we've recently re-
  styled the 404 response pages for most of the Mahara project sites.
  The reports we received pointed out that the default Apache 404
  response page prints the url-decoded (but still html-escaped) query
  portion of the URL on the page. This could result in attackers
  printing arbitrary text onto the page, with spaces and such, which
  conceivably could be part of a phishing attack.

  To keep thing simple, we replaced it with a static empty page that
  doesn't include any details about the requested query. However,
  ideally we'd want to print out a page more like Google's 404 page:

  1. Styled in the site's theme
  2. Contains the requested URL, but in a way that clearly sets it apart (i.e., url-encoded so that spaces are transformed into %20, and possibly truncated if it's quite long.)
  3. Maybe translated as well.

  We could achieve this by shipping a PHP script with Mahara, which a
  Mahara site admin could then configure their Apache server to use for
  its 404 error document, via this directive:

  ErrorDocument 404 /errors/404.php

  We might also provide a "sample.htaccess" file, sitting at the top
  level of the project (outside the htdocs directory) to show people how
  to set this up. (We used to include a .htaccess file in Mahara's
  htdocs by default, but this could cause crashes if people were using
  different servers or different versions of Apache).

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