Best way to password protect a file

[fmrock]

I have been asked to add a new page to a website that has a link for downloading an exe.

The file could be located at

http://www.domain.com/downloads/test.exe

They would like this password protected so not anyone can get this file.

I can put a password on the page that has the links, but the url of that file would still be un protected.

What is the best way to password protect this file?

Thanks.

 

[BigRed1212]

I want to know the answer to this as well.

I found this:

http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess3.shtml

Also saw something about web.config I didn't understand.

 

[BigRed1212]

I figured you would have a response from somebody who knows something (rather than me) by now.

 

[PaulBricker]

What about putting the password on a different page than the one with the links. Store the password in a database then check the password and open the links page if it validates. It's fairly straight forward.

Paul

 

[BigRed1212]

But isn't that really just security through obscurity? If I guess the filename I can download it. And once I've been through the login once, I can just go directly to the link targets without any login fuss, right?

How do the big boys do it?

 

[guitarzan]

This article shows how to use FSO and an ADODB Stream to let a user download a file...

http://www.xefteri.com/articles/show.cfm?id=7

So, you can have an authentication page, and then execute the code above if the authentication is successful.

 

[Bullschmidt]

Yes and here's a related article:

ASP File Explorer by Adrian Forbes - 5/27/2003

http://www.aspfree.com/c/a/ASP-Code/ASP-File-Explorer

Uses ADODB.Stream to open file from protected folder.
Gets the file extension's MIME type from the registry which of course could probably not be done on a shared Web host, but one could have a function to return the most common MIME types.

Best regards,
-Paul

http://www.Bullschmidt.com

- Freelance Web and Database Developer

http://www.Bullschmidt.com/DevTip.asp

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