I am writing to request assistance with an issue on my account. One of my PHP scripts is being blocked by the server’s security system, resulting in a 403 Forbidden error.
Problem Details: The file being blocked is located at: /htdocs/protected/omnisend-gateway.php
This script is a vital part of my custom analytics dashboard. Its only function is to use PHP cURL to securely connect to the official and legitimate Omnisend API (api.omnisend.com) to fetch data for my dashboard.
It appears an automated security rule (like ModSecurity) is incorrectly flagging this script’s outbound cURL request as suspicious and blocking it.
Could you please investigate and whitelist this script (/htdocs/protected/omnisend-gateway.php) or disable the specific security rule that is causing the 403 error for my account?
I think you’re mixing some things up here. ModSecurity is Apache module to block inbound requests. It cannot be used to block outbound requests.
As far as I know, we don’t intercept outbound cURL requests. Outbound HTTP requests are allowed. There are a few specific services that have been blocked due to abuse (mainly some chat APIs due to spam - Omnisend doesn’t fit that bill), and there are limits on how many outbound connections you can make to prevent abuse, but neither of those can explain your 403 error.
Are you absolutely sure that this 403 error is not returned by the upstream API you’re connecting to?
Thank you for the quick and detailed reply. I appreciate the clarification about how your security systems work, especially regarding inbound vs. outbound requests.
You asked if the 403 error could be coming from the upstream API (Omnisend). To test this, I performed an experiment based on my file structure:
Scenario A (This Fails): When my script is located at /htdocs/protected/omnisend-gateway.php and is accessed via an .htaccess rewrite rule, the server immediately returns the 403 Forbidden error.
Scenario B (This Works): When I move the exact same script to the root folder (/htdocs/api.php) and update the .htaccess rule to point to it, the script works perfectly. It successfully connects to the Omnisend API and retrieves data without any errors.
This result confirms that the Omnisend API is not the source of the 403 error. The error is specifically related to the server’s handling of a script being executed from within a subdirectory via a RewriteRule.
With this in mind, could you please check if there are any specific server configurations or security rules that might be preventing this kind of internal rewrite and execution? It seems the combination of the script’s location and the .htaccess rule is what’s being blocked.
Please refrain from using AI to write your posts here. It often changes the meaning of your question / troubleshooting steps, and makes it harder for us to understand what you have done / what your question is.
In the protected directory on your website is a a .htaccess file, and this .htaccess file contains the line Deny from all. This tells the server to block all requests to that URL.
So the reason you’re getting the request is blocked is not a hosting limitation, it’s blocked because you’re blocking it.
Please decide for yourself whether you want to solve this by removing this .htaccess setting or move the API script to a different directory.
I found the real reason. Please read my last reply.
And next time, please read up on the entire topic before replying. There may be additional information available that’s not present in the very first message you read.