Disable CGI scripting in your cPanel server !

by | Dec 14, 2014 | cPanel/WHM | 8 comments

We might decide to disable CGI on the server because of the consequences that weak CGI scripts can have on our server security.

If any vulnerable holes are found and the hacker uploads and runs a CGI script, they can get even root access to the server.

Well then, how to disable this in a cPanel box running on Apache web-server ?

You can turn off ExecCGI by unchecking the following via WHM :

Service Configuration > Apache Configuration > Global Configuration > untick ExecCGI

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But even with this configuration in running state, your normal users can enable it via .htaccess file by passing ExecCGI with ‘Options‘ directive ( which you don’t disable as users need it)

So to make sure your users do not run cgi scripts, you can take out CGI privilege by modifying the already existing accounts created in the server.

Home » Account Functions » Modify an Account

modify-accounts

When this is in-effect, the following gets added to the VirtualHost section of the account :

Options -ExecCGI -Includes
RemoveHandler cgi-script .cgi .pl .plx .ppl .perl

8 Comments

  1. J.G.
    J.G. on October 16, 2018 at 3:18 am

    Thank you very much. By the way, it is also good to deactivate suexec if the module is loaded since it manages CGI users. CGI is less and less used today and for every CGI job it is possible to write a PHP script. So, rather than keeping CGI scripts, we should encourage to only use PHP scripts because CGI scripts can crash any version of apache still today.

    Reply
    • ARUN SURESH BABU
      ARUN SURESH BABU on October 16, 2018 at 3:19 am

      Thank you for the suggestion.

      Reply
  2. J.G.
    J.G. on February 28, 2016 at 2:59 pm

    Thank you very much. By the way, it is also good to deactivate suexec if the module is loaded since it manages CGI users. CGI is less and less used today and for every CGI job it is possible to write a PHP script. So, rather than keeping CGI scripts, we should encourage to only use PHP scripts because CGI scripts can crash any version of apache still today.

    Reply
    • ARUN SURESH BABU
      ARUN SURESH BABU on February 28, 2016 at 7:49 pm

      Thank you for the suggestion.

      Reply
  3. 24x7servermanagement
    24x7servermanagement on October 16, 2018 at 3:18 am

    Thanks for the easy and quick solution

    Reply
    • ARUN SURESH BABU
      ARUN SURESH BABU on October 16, 2018 at 3:18 am

      You are most welcome

      Reply
  4. 24x7servermanagement
    24x7servermanagement on April 22, 2016 at 3:49 pm

    Thanks for the easy and quick solution

    Reply
    • ARUN SURESH BABU
      ARUN SURESH BABU on April 27, 2016 at 10:44 pm

      You are most welcome

      Reply

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