How can I detect if the user is on localhost in PH

Question

In other words, how can I tell if the person using my web application is on the server it resides on? If I remember correctly, PHPMyAdmin does something like this for security reasons.

Answer 1

It doesn't seem you should use $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'], because this is the value in http header, easily faked.

You may use $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"] too, this is the more secure value, but it is also possible to fake. This remote_addr is the address where Apache returns result to.

Answer 2

If you want to have a whitelist / allowlist that supports static IPs and dynamic names.

For example:

$whitelist = array("localhost", "127.0.0.1", "devel-pc.ds.com", "liveserver.com");
if (!isIPWhitelisted($whitelist)) die();

This way you could set a list of names/IPs that will be able (for sure) to be detected. Dynamic names add more flexibility for accessing from different points.

You have two common options here, you could set a name in your local hosts file or you could just use one dynamic name provider that could be found anywhere.

This function CACHES results because gethostbyname is a very slow function.

For this pupose I've implemented this function:

function isIPWhitelisted($whitelist = false)
{
    if ( isset($_SESSION) && isset($_SESSION['isipallowed']) )
        { return $_SESSION['isipallowed'];  }

    // This is the whitelist
    $ipchecklist = array("localhost", "127.0.0.1", "::1");
    if ($whitelist) $ipchecklist = $whitelist;

    $iplist = false;
    $isipallowed = false;

    $filename = "resolved-ip-list.txt";
    $filename = substr(md5($filename), 0, 8)."_".$filename; // Just a spoon of security or just remove this line

    if (file_exists($filename))
    {
        // If cache file has less than 1 day old use it
        if (time() - filemtime($filename) <= 60*60*24*1)
            $iplist = explode(";", file_get_contents($filename)); // Read cached resolved ips
    }

    // If file was not loaded or found -> generate ip list
    if (!$iplist)
    {
        $iplist = array(); $c=0;
        foreach ( $ipchecklist as $k => $iptoresolve )
        {
            // gethostbyname: It's a VERY SLOW function. We really need to cache the resolved ip list
            $ip = gethostbyname($iptoresolve);
            if ($ip != "") $iplist[$c] = $ip;
            $c++;
        }

        file_put_contents($filename, implode(";", $iplist));
    }

    if (in_array($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'], $iplist)) // Check if the client ip is allowed
        $isipallowed = true;

    if (isset($_SESSION)) $_SESSION['isipallowed'] = $isipallowed;

    return $isipallowed;
}

For better reliability you could replace the $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] for the get_ip_address() that @Pekka mentioned in his post as "this bounty question"

Answer 3

$_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"] should tell you the user's IP. It's spoofable, though.

Check this bounty question for a very detailed discussion.

I think what you remember with PHPMyAdmin is something different: Many MySQL Servers are configured so that they can only be accessed from localhost for security reasons.

Answer 4

How about to compare $_SERVER['SERVER_ADDR'] === $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] to determine if client is on the same machine as server?

Answer 5

I found a easy answer.

Because all local drives have C: or D: or F: ... etc.

Just detect if the second character is a :

if ( substr_compare(getcwd(),":",1,1) == 0)
{
echo '<script type="text/javascript">alert(" The working dir is at the local computer ")</script>';
    $client_or_server = 'client';
}
else
{
echo '<script type="text/javascript">alert(" The working dir is at the server ")</script>';
    $client_or_server = 'server';
}

Answer 6

You can also use $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] for which IP address of the client requesting is given by the web server.

$whitelist = array(
    '127.0.0.1',
    '::1'
);

if(!in_array($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'], $whitelist)){
    // not valid
}