Details
The ‘UserDir’ directive must be disabled so that user home directories are not accessed via the web site with a tilde (~) preceding the username. The directive also sets the path name of the directory that will be accessed. For example:
– [http://example.com/~ralph/](http://example.com/~ralph/) might access a ‘public_html’ sub-directory of ‘ralph’ user’s home directory.
– The directive ‘UserDir ./’ might map ‘/~root’ to the root directory (‘/’).
Rationale:
The user directories should not be globally enabled since that allows anonymous access to anything users may want to share with other users on the network. Also consider that every time a new account is created on the system, there is potentially new content available via the web site.
Solution
Perform either one of the following to disable the user directories module:
1. For source builds with static modules, run the Apache ‘./configure’ script with the ‘–disable-userdir configure’ script option.
$ cd $DOWNLOAD/httpd-2.2.22
$ ./configure –disable-userdir
2. For dynamically loaded modules, comment out or remove the ‘LoadModule’ directive for the ‘mod_userdir’ module from the ‘httpd.conf’ file.
##LoadModule userdir_module modules/mod_userdir.so
Supportive Information
The following resource is also helpful.
This security hardening control applies to the following category of controls within NIST 800-53: Configuration Management.This control applies to the following type of system Unix.