Explorer not showing .swf protected by mod_rewrite

Hi there,

I have setup .htaccess file to protect my .php, .html, and .swf files
from hotlinking or direct access (bookmarking etc). It evalates the
referer and if it's empty it will return 403 (standard stuff).

The problem I am having is that Explorer will not show .swf even if
with valid referer. The HTML page gets downloaded I can view the
source, but the .swf does not display and the progress bar shows that
it is downloading the file.

The funny thing is (why am I not surprised) that it all works fine
with Mozilla/Firefox.

TIA

R>

bob_whale@yahoo.com (R. Z.) writes:
> I have setup .htaccess file to protect my .php, .html, and .swf files
> from hotlinking or direct access (bookmarking etc).

Er, why? What do you have against people being able to bookmark your pages?

> It evalates the referer and if it's empty it will return 403
> (standard stuff).

Surely you mean 'offsite' rather than 'empty'. Though even that's not
safe - several firewalls filter out referer or replace it with another
string, several browsers can be set to do this (I know at least one
where it's the factory settings...)

> The problem I am having is that Explorer will not show .swf even if
> with valid referer. The HTML page gets downloaded I can view the
> source, but the .swf does not display and the progress bar shows that
> it is downloading the file.

Does IE display it if you take out the .htaccess rules? Do your server
logs show that IE is in fact passing the referer in when trying to
load the .swf?

> The funny thing is (why am I not surprised) that it all works fine
> with Mozilla/Firefox.

What is the difference in the requests that Mozilla/IE are sending?

--
Chris

R. Z. wrote:

> I have setup .htaccess file to protect my .php, .html, and .swf files
> from hotlinking or direct access (bookmarking etc). It evalates the
> referer and if it's empty it will return 403 (standard stuff).

Referrers are often blocked in the browser, you may want to consider
blocking only third party referrers but allow blank referrers.

--
Klaus Johannes Rusch
KlausRusch@atmedia.net
http://www.atmedia.net/KlausRusch/