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Setting Hotlink Protection
Last updated:2025-11-28 17:49:13
Setting Hotlink Protection
Last updated: 2025-11-28 17:49:13

Overview

Tencent Cloud COS provides hotlink protection to help users avoid unnecessary losses caused by malicious programs' stealing public network traffic using resource URLs or stealing resources. We recommend that you configure the blocklist/allowlist in Hotlink Protection Settings on the console to ensure security protection.
Note:
If a signature is carried in the access URL or headers, hotlink protection−based verification will not be performed.
When configuring hotlink protection, you can add your domain to the allowlist for the multipart upload request of large files.

Directions

1. Log in to the COS console. Click Bucket List on the left sidebar to open the Bucket List page.
2. Locate the bucket for which you want to set hotlink protection, and click its name to enter the bucket management page.
3. Click Security Management > Hotlink Protection, find the hotlink protection configuration item, and click Edit.
4. Switch the status to Enable, select a list type (blocklist or allowlist), input the domain name or IP address to be added to the blocklist or allowlist in the Referer configuration item, confirm and click save, configuration items are described as follows:



Blocklist: Select this item to deny access to the default access address of the bucket for domain names or IP addresses in Referer, and return a 403 error.
Allowlist: Select this item to allow access to the default access address of the bucket for domain names or IP addresses in Referer. Other domains or IPs will be rejected when accessing the default access address of the bucket, and a 403 error will be returned.
Empty referer: For an HTTP request, the header referer can be left empty (i.e., the HTTP request header has no referer field or the referer field is empty).
Referer: Enter up to 30 domain names or IP addresses (one per line). The wildcard * is supported, such as *.test.com. Examples are as follows:
If www.example.com is specified, www.example.com/123, www.example.com.cn, and other addresses with the prefix of www.example.com will also be included in the list.
Domain names and IPs with ports are supported, such as www.example.com:8080 and 10.10.10.10:8080.
If *.example.com is specified, addresses such as a.b.example.com/123 and a.example.com are also included.
Note:
If accelerated access is implemented via a CDN endpoint domain name, CDN hotlink protection rules will be executed before COS hotlink protection rules.

Using REST API/SDK

You can set hotlink protection through the following API:
You can directly call the SDK to set hotlink protection. For details, please refer to the following SDK documentation for different languages:

Example

A user with the APPID of 1250000000 creates a bucket named examplebucket-1250000000 and places an image picture.jpg in the root directory. COS has generated the following default access address according to the rules:
examplebucket-1250000000.file.myqcloud.com/picture.jpg
User A owns a website:
www.example.com
and embeds the image into the homepage index.html.
Webmaster B manages a website:
www.fake.com
and wants to put this image on www.fake.com. But he doesn't want to pay for traffic costs. He creates a direct link to picture.jpg through the following address and places it into the homepage index.html on www.fake.com.
examplebucket-1250000000.file.myqcloud.com/picture.jpg
In such cases, to avoid losses for User A, we provide the following two methods of enabling hotlink protection.

Method 1

Configure the blacklist by entering the domain name *.fake.com, and save.

Method 2

The allowlist method: Add *.example.com to the allowlist and save.
The image is displayed normally when http://www.example.com/index.html is accessed. The image is also displayed normally when http://www.fake.com/index.html is accessed.
The image is displayed normally when http://www.example.com/index.html is accessed. The image cannot be displayed when http://www.fake.com/index.html is accessed.

Notes for Mini Program

1. For network requests using Weixin Mini Programs, the referer value is fixed as https://servicewechat.com/{appid}/{version}/page-frame.html.
2. If hotlink protection is enabled for your bucket, to allow Weixin Mini Programs to load COS images, add servicewechat.com to your hotlink allowlist in the COS console.
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