Is it possible to use http_refer to block direct access to a folder while allows a flash player access

Question

I have mp3 files on my server that I want to be accessed via a flash player on my site. Is it possible to use http_refer to do this as suggested by a close colleage?

Based on my research, I kept coming across the code below but that blocks everything including my flash player. How do I only allow my flash player to access the files with just manipulating the .htaccess file?

< Files *>
Deny from all
< /Files>

Answer 1

Using http_referer (sic) to validate anything is unsafe as some users turn this off. If your files are available on the web... well, they're available on the web. Lot's of people spend lots of time and money pondering the question of how restrict audio, to little effect. Without significantly more investment of time, I wouldn't worry to much about it.

Besides, here are the headers firefox sends when Flash requests an MP3:

GET /music.mp3 HTTP/1.1
Host: myhost:80
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.2) Gecko/20100316 Firefox/3.6.2 GTB7.1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-gb,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive

Nothing identifying Flash as the source of the request. Out of luck.