phpmyadmin security

Question

I have a production server with apache2, php, mysql. I have just one site right now (mysite.com) as a virtual host. I want to put phpmyadmin, webalizer, and maybe webmin on there. So far, I installed phpmyadmin, and it works but the whole internet can go to mysite.com/phpmyadmin

How can I reduce the visibility to say 192.168.0.0/16 so it's just accessible to machines behind my firewall?

Answer 1

1) You can do it at the Webserver level.

Use allow/deny rules for apache. If you don't have direct access to your apache configuration file, you may use a .htaccess file.

<Directory /docroot>
    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 10.1.2.3
</Directory>

2) You can do it at the application level using the phpmyadmin config file.

The configuration parameter is: $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowDeny']['rules']

Examples of rules are:

'all' -> 0.0.0.0/0
'localhost' -> 127.0.0.1/8
'localnetA' -> SERVER_ADDRESS/8
'localnetB' -> SERVER_ADDRESS/16
'localnetC' -> SERVER_ADDRESS/24

You can see this on the official phpMyAdmin configuration documentation.

http://www.phpmyadmin.net/documentation/#servers_allowdeny_order

Answer 2

You would use a module in Apache called mod_access

You can either configure it in your apache config file or within a .htaccess file in the directory's root.

Here's a short example

<Directory /your_folder/location>
    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
   Allow from 123.123.123.123
</Directory>

Answer 3

Use the <Location> directive (either in server configuration or if it is allowed, in .htaccess). In there, you can use Allow from to deny access to everyone else except some certain source.