Is there a way how I can configure the Apache web server to return a 404 (not found) error code instead of 403 (forbidden) for some specific directories which I want to disallow to be accessed?
I found some solutions suggesting the use of mod_rewrite, like e.g.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^.*$ /404 [L]
As the purpose of sending 404 instead of 403 is to obfuscate the directory structure, this solution is too revealing, because it redirects to some different location which makes it obvious that the directory originally accessed does in fact exist.
RedirectMatch as in e.g.
does the trick, it prohibits access to all files or directories starting with a dot, giving a "404 Not Found" error.
From the Apache manual: "The Redirect[Match] directive maps an old URL into a new one by asking the client to refetch the resource at the new location." By default, Redirect sends a 302 return code, but it can also return other status codes as shown above.
After having the same problem, I ended up with the following .htaccess file
The 1st and 3rd line ensure that you can't list the folder content, and if you do it you will receive a 404 error. The RewriteCond directive ensures that this rewrite rule only applies to main domain. Since I have several subdomains, without the rewritecond, accessing www.mydomain.com/subdomain was also returning a 404, which was not what I intended.
To change all 403,400 errors into 404 errors, put this at the end of /etc/apache2/conf.d/localized-error-pages OR into a .htaccess
You can make something like this:
.htaccess
404.php