Is it possible to get a list of files under a directory of a website? How?

Question

Say I have a website www.abc.com. Under the website directory there is a page secret.html. It can be accessed directly like www.abc.com/secret.html, but there are no pages that link to it. Is it possible to discover this page, or will it remain hidden from outside world?

Answer 1

There are only two ways to find a web page: through a link or by listing the directory.

Usually, web servers disable directory listing, so if there is really no link to the page, then it cannot be found.

BUT: information about the page may get out in ways you don't expect. For example, if a user with Google Toolbar visits your page, then Google may know about the page, and it can appear in its index. That will be a link to your page.

Answer 2

If you have directory listing disabled in your webserver, then the only way somebody will find it is by guessing or by finding a link to it.

That said, I've seen hacking scripts attempt to "guess" a whole bunch of these common names. "secret.html" would probably be in such a guess list.

The more reasonable solution is to restrict access using a username/password via a htaccess file (for apache) or the equivalent setting for whatever webserver you're using.