Question

How to exempt a directory on the filesystem from mod_security rules

Asked by: Xyptilon2

When using the core rules from Mod_security, how can i configure a rule that disables scanning for /home/phpMyAdmin without using a htaccess file or reconfiguring every vhost file on a server. The configuration file i use is (on top of the standard rules): modsecurity_crs_99_customrules.conf

I tried:

SecRule SCRIPT_FILENAME "(^/home/phpMyAdmin.*)" phase:2,log,allow,ctl:ruleEngine=Off,ctl:auditEngine=Off

But that doesn't work because the other rule is processed first and once triggered stops processing. In phase 1 the SCRIPT_FILENAME variabele doesn't seem to be available yet for processing so i cannot do it there. I also tried:

<Directory "^/home/phpMyAdmin/">
    SecRuleEngine Off
    SecFilterInheritance Off
</Directory>

This doesn't do anything either...

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Asked On
2009-03-14 at 04:00:08ID24230081
Tags

mod_security

,

phpmyadmin

,

violation

Topics

ISPs & Web Hosting

,

Apache Web Server

,

Web Hosting

Participating Experts
1
Points
100
Comments
3

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Answers

 

by: caterham_wwwPosted on 2009-03-14 at 05:15:56ID: 23886415

<Directory "^/home/phpMyAdmin/">

should read

<Directory "/home/phpMyAdmin">

without the ^ since this isn't a regEx.

 

by: Xyptilon2Posted on 2009-03-14 at 05:23:17ID: 23886440

Unfortunately that doesn't work. I'm still getting:

[14/Mar/2009:13:24:03 +0100] [domein.com/sid#a079eb0][rid#b5d1f60][/tbl_change.php][1] Access denied with code 501 (phase 2). Pattern match "(?:\b(?:(?:n(?:et(?:\b\W+?\blocalgroup|\.exe)|(?:map|c)\.exe)|t(?:racer(?:oute|t)|elnet\.exe|clsh8?|ftp)|(?:w(?:guest|sh)|rcmd|ftp)\.exe|echo\b\W*?\by+)\b|c(?:md(?:(?:32)?\.exe\b|\b\W*?\/c)|d(?:\b\W*?[\\/]|\W*?\.\.)|hmod.{0,40}?\+.{0,3}x))|[\;\|\`]\W*? ..." at ARGS:primary_key. [file "/etc/apache2/modsecurity_rules/modsecurity_crs_40_generic_attacks.conf"] [line "133"] [id "950006"] [msg "System Command Injection"] [data "`.`id"] [severity "CRITICAL"] [tag "WEB_ATTACK/COMMAND_INJECTION"]

Any other ideas?

 

by: Xyptilon2Posted on 2009-03-22 at 08:38:27ID: 23951904

The problem is solved, im posting the answer here for others to read. The problem was that the rule was enclosed in an inproperly named <ifmodule> directive which caused the rules not to fire (naturally). Having fixed that solved the problem. Although i ended up using the SERVER_NAME variable for the host header instead of a directory (since in this case it was always a subdirectory). And am using 2 files:

/etc/apache2/modsecurity_rules/modsecurity_crs_15_whitelist.conf
/etc/apache2/modsecurity_rules/modsecurity_crs_99_customrules.conf

The first for whitelisting entire IP addresses or domains. Fires before the other rules. The second fires after the other rules and is used for handling false positives.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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