Lighttpd mod_rewrite Hotlink Protection To Display Image Message

Many of our regular readers like to know more about lighttpd hotlink protection using mod_rewrite. Lighttpd can use HTTP referer to detect hotlink and can be configured to partially protect hosted media from inline linking, usually by not serving the media or by serving a different file.

Lighttpd anti hotlinking configuration - redirect to another media

Open lighttpd.conf configuration file:
# vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
Append following directive to redirect to a default picture called /hotlink.png:

$HTTP["referer"] =~ ".*BADDOMAIN\.com.*|.*IMAGESUCKERDOMAIN\.com.*|.*blogspot\.com.*" {
  url.rewrite = ("(?i)(/.*\.(jpe?g|png))$" => "/hotlink.png" )
}

So if anyone from *.blogspot.com linked www.cyberciti.biz/image.png it will be replaced with www.cyberciti.biz/hotlink.png. I've written small script to detect excessive hotlink from log file and ban all those domains. Most types of electronic media can be redirected this way, including video files, music files, and animations etc.

Related: Apache web server user can stop lechers using mod_rewrite / .htaccess rules.

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