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- Clients that receive a 403 response should expect that repeating the request without modification will fail with the same error. Server owners may decide to send a 404 response instead of a 403 if acknowledging the existence of a resource to clients with insufficient privileges is not desired.
developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/403
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Why should a server send a 404 response instead of a 403?
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Should I return a 404 instead of a 403 HTTP status code?
Why is a 403 request forbidden?
What does 403 HTTP status code mean?
Does returning a 404 improve security?
In order to have a working solution we need to meet the following criteria: Return a custom error, specifically one that conveys the requested resource does not exist. Clearly return a complementing 404 HTTP status code to back up the custom error instead of the 403. Retain normal 404 behavior.
Sep 26, 2015 · Semantically speaking, an API should return an error message adapted to the situation. For instance, if a user makes a request to GET /article/2386, it should return (the user needs to be auth to request that API to handle rights management): article data if it exists and user has permission, 404 Not Found with error message if it doesn't exist,
The 404 Page Not Found error is due to your .htaccess file looking for and not finding where it expects, some kind of customised error page to show in this circumstance. It's possible your hosting provider may have this configured at the server-level rather than it being under your control.
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- Picking The Right Error Code
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401 — indicates that the request has not been applied because it lacks valid authentication credentials for the target resource. The user is not authenticated. (See here for more information on the difference between authentication and authorization). The API requires a valid user, this is determined by the Authorization header in the request. A 40...
403— indicates that the server understood the request but refuses to authorize it. The user is not authorized. The user attempted to perform an action, but the token that identified the user does not have sufficient permissions to do that. It’s really helpful to return the permissions that the user is missing so that they can go request them from a...
404 — indicates that the server can’t find the requested resource. Links which lead to a 404 page are often called broken or dead links, and can be subject to link rot. If the url path otherwise known as the resource doesn’t exist, then a 404 is appropriate.
That seems easy to handle, and most of the time, they go in order: 1. Validate Token 2. Verify user permissions 3. Check resource existence Sometimes 2 and 3 happen in the reverse order depending on what’s easier for the application server. However, when you do this you could be opening your resources up to exposing too much information. What happe...
Want to see how Authress uses error codes to ensure security? Checkout the Authress Management Portal — API section. Originally published at https://authress.io on July 1, 2020.
Sep 23, 2024 · Clients that receive a 403 response should expect that repeating the request without modification will fail with the same error. Server owners may decide to send a 404 response instead of a 403 if acknowledging the existence of a resource to clients with insufficient privileges is not desired.
Jun 13, 2013 · Returning a 404 instead does not improve security, it is simply security-by-obscurity which offers no real security benefit. Also, returning 404s will pollute your logs and stats reports with misleading messages, making it hard to distinguish true 404s from your pseudo 404s.
Now, if you consider the application to be just an extension of the server, and the subitem (tree) to be the actual resource, then a 404 response is appropriate: the server has merely delegated the task of finding the actual resource to the application, which it turn has failed to do so.
