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#30917 .htaccess post-installation message

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Latest post by genr8r on Wednesday, 13 February 2019 08:48 CST

genr8r
Greetings.

The 3.9.3 release of Joomla includes a new post-installation message that recommends an addition to .htaccess.

.htaccess & web.config security Update

Since version 3.9.3



Since Joomla 3.9.3, Joomla is shipped with additional security hardenings in the default htaccess.txt and web.config.txt files. These hardenings disable the so called MIME-type sniffing feature in webbrowsers. The sniffing leads to specific attack vectors, where scripts in normally harmless file formats (i.e. images) will be executed, leading to Cross-Site-Scripting vulnerabilities.



The security teams recommends to manually apply the necessary changes to existing .htaccess or web.config files, as those files can not be updated automatically.



Changes for .htaccess

Add the following lines before "## Mod_rewrite in use.":



<IfModule mod_headers.c>

Header always set X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff"

</IfModule>


If I am using Admin Tools is this addition recommended/necessary? If so, do you have a recommendation about where to best add it?

Thank you.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Admin Tools is way ahead of Joomla! :) This is what our "Reduce MIME type security risks" feature has been doing since Admin Tools 3.6.0, release on June 22nd, 2015.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

genr8r
Sometimes it takes a few for the cream to rise to the top. Happy to know this .htaccess best practice has been in place for our clients for awhile now. Thanks for your work and the quick response Nicolas!

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