This is a re-post of a still relevant post from my old blog at SharePointBlogs.com:

—

Today Last year at the SharePoint Conference in Berlin, Ben Robb of cScape Ltd gave a talk about configuring internet-facing web sites running MOSS 2007/WCM.

He brought up some interesting points about securing the application against unauthorised content editing and attacks from hackers.

Make sure your installation check list contains a least the following items:

1. Enable firewalls and standard network security
Fairly standard stuff, but necessary all the same.

2. Disable SMTP and incoming mail
In essence, you shouldn’t be running services on the server that aren’t necessary for MOSS. Also, close any ports that MOSS doesn’t need.

3. Secure the Central Administration site
Surprisingly, it is very common to leave this entry point wide open. The admin site should be accessible only via an SSL connection .

4. Use lockdown mode
Use this stsadm command to activate lockdown mode:
stsadm –o activatefeature –url <url> -filename ViewFormPagesLockdown\feature.xml
Read more about ViewFormPagesLockdown.

5. Restricted reader role
The anonymous user should have a restricted reader role which only enables viewing of pages, documents and images.

6. Policies
Constrain the maximum access per web application and deny all write access via http://sitename:80.

7. Content deployment
Use different servers for authoring and the actual internet-facing web application. Content generated on the authoring server (typically within the intranet) should be pushed out to the public site using scheduled content deployment jobs.

…

To many administrators the above bullets merely point out the obvious and do feel free to leave comments if you have any additions to the list.

Thanks to Ben Robb for providing 99% of the info for this post.

Hardening your internet-facing MOSS installation is essential to avoid attacks. Check out Microsoft’s excellent guide which takes you through most of the steps required to shield your portal against intruders.

However, if your portal wasn’t born as a publishing portal, all anonymous users will have access to AllItems.aspx, DispForm.aspx and other pages that you probably don’t want outside users to see. For instance, you may have created a newsletter signup web part which posts data to a list (using elevation). In time, the list fills up with more or less sensitive information about your newsletter subscribers and you probably don’t want this information to end up in the wrong hands.

Unfortunately, it is quite easy for someone with just a litte SharePoint experience to guess the path to e.g. the AllItems.aspx page of a SharePoint list:

And if your portal is not locked down, all list items will be there for the taking.

ViewFormPagesLockDown

Stsadm comes to the rescue yet again. To activate the lockdown, simply run this stsadm command:

stsadm -o activatefeature -url <site collection url> -filename ViewFormPagesLockDown\feature.xml

If you get the “Operation completed successfully”-message, you’re in business.

Well, almost…

The final step

You’ll probably find that the new feature still hasn’t kicked in. Fear not, you simply need to deactivate and reactivate anonymous access on the portal.