connect-block-hotlinks

connect-block-hotlinks

I wrote this middleware to keep people from embedding my site's images into their own sites. It compares the HTTP headers Host and Referer to make sure they are from the same 2nd-level domain. For example, if Host is img.example.com then referer can be http://example.com/ or http://blog.example.com/ but not http://another.com/.

This will not stop a determined attacker! For that you should use CORS and authentication mechanisms. But it will prevent people stealing your bandwidth by using a URL to your image in the 'src' of an tag on another site.

API

It follows a classic Connect/Express middleware pattern:

var express = require('express');
var blockHotlinks = require('connect-block-hotlinks');

var app = express();
app.use "/img/*", blockHotlinks

Depending on the request, the middleware will either:

• do nothing, and call next() so the route can be handled by the next route handler.
• return a 403 Forbidden "Missing 'Host' HTTP Header"
• return a 403 Forbidden "Missing 'Referer' HTTP Header"
• return a 200 OK hotlinking-disallowed.png