+ Horde Security Tips
The content of this page is mainly derived from the security-section in the Horde documentation. It is aimed at system administrators who want to add some extra security to their Horde installations (or for those who are a bit paranoid ;) )
Important note: Some of these things are not working very well together with Horde 3.0. I'll redo this stuff as soon as possible. Promisse ;)
+++ Introduction
The configuration examples here have been tested by me on a Fedora Core 1 system running Apache 2.0.51 with mod_ssl and Horde 2.2.7.
My Apache is serving most files out of {{/var/www/html}}. Thus my Horde installation lives in {{/var/www/html/horde}}. Please keep this in mind if you are applying any of these configurations on your system.
----
+++ Filesystem Permissions
<code>
chown -R apache.apache /var/www/html/horde
</code>
This will change the user and the group of all files belonging to your Horde installation to the user and group of your Apache webserver. If your Apache shipps with suexec, Horde will be started with the permissions of your webserver from now on.
If you want more restrictive settings, you might try the following:
<code>
chmod -R go-rwx /var/www/html/horde/config
chmod -R go-rwx /var/www/html/horde/*/config
</code>
This will prevent any of your config-files to be accessed from the outside. If that's not enough for you, try this:
<code>
chmod -R a-w /var/www/html/horde/
</code>
That's a bit overkill IMHO but makes all the files belonging to Horde unwritable by anyone except root. Take note that this might (and will) cause problems if you are planning to use Horde's built-in administration routines.
----
+++ Apache/PHP Configuration
The Horde documentation is suggestingsuggests an awfullawful lot of <Directory> instructions to secure Hore.Horde. I've found a way to limit those to one <Directory> and one <!DirectoryMatch> instruction //and// statisfy Horde's needs towards PHP on the fly:
<code>
<Directory "/var/www/html/horde/">
Options none
# Only needed if you have got safe_mode globally on
php_admin_flag safe_mode off
# /usr b/c of PEAR. /var is needed for my installation...
php_admin_value open_basedir "/var:/usr"
# always a good idea :)
php_admin_flag expose_php off
# If you do this (recomended by the PHP documentation, btw)...
php_admin_flag display_errors off
# ... you need to set this also - otherwise you'll have no idea what's wrong if something doesn't work.
# Don't forget to specify a logfile in your php.ini or elsewhere!
php_admin_flag log_errors on
php_admin_flag register_globals off
</Directory>
<DirectoryMatch "^/var/www/html/horde/(.*/)?(config|lib|locale|po|scripts|templates)/(.*)?">
order deny,allow
deny from all
</DirectoryMatch>
<LocationMatch "^/horde/(.*/)?test.php">
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from localhost
</LocationMatch>
</code>
This way you can safely switch {{php_safe_mode}} globaly on and still have Horde working. Please notice that you might need to modify the {{open_basedir}} directive. It includes {{/var}} in this example because there are a lot of important things in {{/var}} on my server (i.e. the cache and the logfile for Horde),
Please take note that you need to put this into your httpd.conf because the {{php_admin_*}} instructions won't work in a .htaccess file. If you do so, don't forget to use {{httpd -t}} to check for syntax errors in your httpd.conf before you restart your Apache. Apache 2.0.x allows you to place a config file into {{/etc/httpd/conf.d/}} so you can place the whole thing into a new file {{/etc/httpd/conf.d/horde.conf}}. If the directory {{/etc/httpd}} doesn't exist on your system, you may execute the following command on a shell to find out, what your Apache's config-directoy is:
<code>
httpd -V | grep HTTPD_ROOT
httpd -V | grep SERVER_CONFIG_FILE
</code>
Also note that I used escaped slashes in the !RegEx for the <!DirectoryMatch> instruction. Apache seems to cope with unescaped metacharacters. But since I'm using perl-RegEx most of the time, I'm used to escape those.
The <!DirectoryMatch>-instruction is restricting access to the folders //config//, //lib//, //locale//, //po//, //scripts// and //templates// in Horde and all its applications.
<!LocationMatch> prevents Horde's test.php scripts being accessed from the outside. The Horde documentation is suggesting to restrict //all// hosts. This example allows access from your local host so you can run the tests via [http://lynx.browser.org/ lynx], for instance.
* Guide on [http://www.regular-expressions.org/ RegularExpressions]
* [http://www.php.net/manual/en/ini.php List of core php.ini directives]
* [http://www.php.net/manual/en/security.php PHP Security Manual]
* Apache 2.0 documentation on the [http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/core.html#directory <Directory>] instruction
* Apache 2.0 documentation on the [http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/core.html#directorymatch <DirectoryMatch>] instruction
* Apache 2.0 documentation on the [http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/core.html#locationmatch <LocationMatch>] instruction
----
+++ !MySQL Configuration
There's little to do. If you do not need the networking part of your !MySQL installation and can rely on UNIX-sockets, you can disable it by adding the following line into your {{etc/my.cnf}} in the {{[mysqld]}} section:
<code>
skip-networking
</code>
This will also decrease the size of your mysql-threads. if you want even more free RAM, also add:
<code>
skip-innodb
skip-bdb
</code>
This will turn off the !InnoDB addon and support for Berkeley Databases. You should leave !InnoDB enabled if you use that type of table.
If you absolutely //need// TCP-connections to your !MySQL server, you can specify port and IP-address in the same section:
<code>
bind-address=127.0.0.1
port=3306
</code>
This example will bind the !MySQL-server to the local host at port 3306 (!MySQL default).
Also make sure that your password for Horde's database is //safe// (even if you disabled networking support).
* !MySQL Documentation -- [http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Server_options.html mysqld Command-Line Options]
* !MySQL Documentation -- [http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Security.html General Security Issues]
* !MySQL Documentation -- [http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/MySQL_Optimization.html MySQL Optimizations]
* Informations about the [http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/BDB_storage_engine.html Berkeley Storage Engine] (BDB)
* Informations about the [http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/InnoDB.html InnoDB Storage Engine]
* [http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-93517 Tweaked my.cnf]
----
+++ PEAR Security
There's only one thing: Keep your installation of PEAR up to date. Here's how:
<code>
pear upgrade-all
</code>
* [http://pear.php.net/ PHP Extension and Application Repository] (PEAR) Homepage