Hotlinking and Internet Security

fretnmore

Grandma Looney
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Hotlinking and Internet Security

« on: January 09, 2005, 02:36:39 PM »

I am having a problem viewing images on certain web sites and in the forums. I'm not sure what is causing it, but have felt that it must be something in the way my computer is set up. I am running Windows XP Pro and Norton Internet Security - mostly with default settings. I have added a few sites to my trusted list, but not a lot.

Quote from: Pete

Re the images not showing up issue: (both deadly_risks and Dai's ) I run zone alarm on my other machine. If I have "Remove private header information " ticked in the cookie control section, I get the same images missing. Unticking "Remove private header information" puts them back on again.

I can't find anything in Norton that would concern Private Header Information. Can't find it in Firefox or IE either. So this isn't fixing it.

It's real confusing because I know others who have hotlink protection on their images and yet when I go to their sites I can still see their images. So why with a few am I not able to see them? Plus, it doesn't make sense that I can't view the images when I go to their site. Hotlinking is to protect from someone stealing your images, not when you are actually viewing the site.

This runs into the forums too. When a few people post an image that is inside their hotlink protection, it is not viewable by me and yet others can see it. Just doesn't make sense to me.

Can anyone help figure out what I have set up wrong? Or is it something set up wrong with hotlinking on a few sites?
Confused


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TranzNDance

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Hotlinking and Internet Security

« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2005, 02:41:27 PM »

A google search for "norton referer hotlink protection" could help you find the right settings.

The reason is hotlink protection depends on referer data to determine if the request to view the file is legitimate. Security applications that hide or alter referer data to "protect" privacy prevents the server from knowing if the request to view the file is coming from the correct domain, since hotlink protection works by seeing if the referer data is in the whitelist.

The reason why some hotlink protected sites show up and others don't is due to differences in coding of the .htaccess file, which determines how tolerant the server is of masked referer data.


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fretnmore

Grandma Looney
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Hotlinking and Internet Security

« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2005, 02:56:16 PM »

Thanks Thu, I had searched on the terms Pete used, but your search string was where I found a solution.

For anyone else having the same type of problem

Code:

I went into Norton Internet Security (2004) , clicked on Privacy Control, Configure, advanced. In Global Settings I had to uncheck the block on information about visited sites.

I can now see dai images in the forums, and the hotlink protection is not messing up my viewing of deadly_risk site he has been working on. But the background on this site is still showing the hotlink protection image. If I refresh a couple of times, then it is OK. Is that just a cache problem now?


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TranzNDance

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Hotlinking and Internet Security

« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2005, 03:04:05 PM »

Yes, it's a cache issue. You can empty the cache so you don't have to keep refreshing. Smile


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fretnmore

Grandma Looney
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Hotlinking and Internet Security

« Reply #4 on: January 09, 2005, 03:07:20 PM »

Thank you so much Thu


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TranzNDance

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Hotlinking and Internet Security

« Reply #5 on: January 26, 2005, 04:40:51 PM »

For those who don't want to ask their visitors to change their security settings, they could edit the .htaccess file so that it has the second line as seen in this example:

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?yourdomain.com(/)?.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.lunarforums.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp|pdf)$ - [F,NC]


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JamesG

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Hotlinking and Internet Security

« Reply #6 on: January 27, 2005, 02:11:53 AM »

Quote from: fretnmore

But the background on this site is still showing the hotlink protection image. If I refresh a couple of times, then it is OK. Is that just a cache problem now?

heh, the hotlinking image might be nicer than the background Surprised


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AL3X1S

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Hotlinking and Internet Security

« Reply #7 on: April 23, 2005, 05:58:32 PM »

Thanx for the code TranzNDance,

I will add it


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TranzNDance

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Hotlinking and Internet Security

« Reply #8 on: April 27, 2005, 07:38:31 AM »

For web developers who do not have Norton security, you can see what your visitors who do use it see.

If you use Firefox with the web dev tool bar, under the Disable menu, select Disable Referrer Logging.

It helps in troubleshooting. When someone has trouble viewing images, you can fiddle with that setting to see if you can replicate the issue.


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TranzNDance

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Hotlinking and Internet Security

« Reply #9 on: May 04, 2005, 08:55:29 PM »

Here's another behavior resulting from hotlink protection and referer blocking. This is something to consider when troubleshooting.

There was an image I was only able to see when referer info was blocked. Otherwise, I could not tell that the image was missing, since Firefox does not show a missing placeholder like IE. Turned out that the image did have hotlink protection enabled, but the domain displaying the image was not in the whitelist.


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