Drupal: does removing these lines from .htaccess cause security issues ?

Question

hi,

I had to comment these lines from the htaccess files in my main Drupal folder and in sites folder

# Don't show directory listings for URLs which map to a directory.
#Options -Indexes

# Follow symbolic links in this directory.
#Options +FollowSymLinks

...in order to not get a 500 Internal Error on the new server.

Can I leave them uncommented or am I going to have security issues ?

ps. I've also set all content in files folder 777 permission. Is this ok ?

thanks

Answer 1

You can leave them commented.

Options -Indexes just stops people from viewing a list of all files in a directory, which is basically harmless anyway.

Answer 2

It could be a problem - a potential attacker will know exactly which modules you have on your site and exactly which versions. So if you don't update your modules regularly when they have security releases, then your site will be easily exploitable.