The World Wide Web Security FAQ

1. Introduction

This is the World Wide Web Security Frequently Asked Question list (FAQ). It attempts to answer some of the most frequently asked questions relating to the security implications of running a Web server. There is also a short section on Web security from the browser's perspective.

Copies of this document can be obtained at:

The text-only version is no longer available.

The author of this FAQ has very limited experience with the Macintosh and Windows servers (although he's slowly learning!). Web servers for these operating systems are pretty new, and there hasn't been much time for collective wisdom on the security issues for these platforms to form. I apologize for the pronounced Unix (and Linux) bias in this document. Help in fleshing out these topics is welcomed!

Much of this document is abstracted from the author's book "How to Set Up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site", published by Addison-Wesley.

This document is © copyright 1995, 1996 Lincoln D. Stein. However it may be freely reprinted and redistributed as long as the authorship is correctly attributed.

Many thanks to the following people for their helpful comments and contributions to this document:

Lincoln D. Stein, lstein@genome.wi.mit.edu
Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research
Last modified: Sat Mar 23 00:14:36 MET 1996